“The Prodigal Son Returns, Beech Wood, North Carolina © Stu Jenks, 2019-2020, 51 inches tall.
Price: $125, shipping included in the price. Simply contact me via my email address at stujenks@gmail.com or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall. Love y'all, Stu.
The wood was cut in 2019, the piece finished in 2020, after my diagnosis of severe prostate cancer, before my radical prostatectomy surgery. A tough time for me. I was in Tucson then, away from Alexa, working part time at an out patient clinic, making a little money from photography, waiting for my Social Security to kick in so I could move back to North Carolina to be with my wife. I knew I would return but I didn't know when. Ended up being August of 2020 before I was well enough to move. Longer than any of us expected.
My dad used to say, "The Prodigal Son returns!" when I would walk into the Raleigh house on Sundays during my college days, when I would hitchhike home from Chapel Hill to get a hot meal, pick up a $40 check, and maybe do my laundry too. I think Dad was trying to be funny but it didn't feel funny. After dinner, Dad would drop me off on I-40 west of town to hitch back to UNC (It was a different time in the 70's. Everybody hitchhiked.), As I would get out of his car he would say, "I love you, son." "Love you too, Dad," I would halfheartedly say back to him.
No one ever in my family told me they loved me. Ever. Until Dad started when I was in college.
So the Prodigal Son has returned again. This time to the loving arms of my wife. But this morning, I'm thinking fondly of my father, Stuart Jenks Sr., who didn't really want to have kids, and really didn't like being married to my mother, but at some point in the mid 1970's decided, on his own, to start telling his son that he loved him.
And Dad continued to say 'I love you' until a couple days before he died in September of 2001.
And I told him I love him too. This time, not halfheartedly.
#prodigalsonreturns, #stujenks, #extendedfamilyseries
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