This September was a month to remember.

Three boys graduated from Whetstone within one week of each other, and headed back to their part of the country.

Back to their families, their friends, their favorite restaurants, fishing holes and coffee shops.  Sleeping in their own beds, reclining in their favorite comfy chair, and probably catching up on their favorite TV shows before someone ruins the surprise ending of the most recent season.

They will most likely spend a period of time pretending that Whetstone was a bump in their road, a hurdle or an obstacle on their path to self-fulfillment, echoing the complaints that we hear day after day from residents who want more than anything to just be back home.  It’s hard being away from your loved ones for 6 months, even if you’re not getting along.   Family is still family.  And strangers, for all of our mentoring and come-along-siding, are still strangers.

However, if they anything like the vast number of boys who have spent even one month with us during the last 6 years, they will come to regard their time here as something very special.   Something that didn’t change them, so much as it made them realize what they always knew they could be.  Whetstone didn’t fix all of their problems, and it didn’t light up some yellow-brick road into a techni-color future;  but it did point them in the right direction, because there is really is “no place like home.”