Our last performance was for the New York Mets, a team I’d idolized while growing up on Long Island. On a drizzly day in 1999 we took our spots behind home plate at Shea Stadium before a crowd of nearly 50,000 and played the anthem. With us that day were my wife, my parents, my brother and his wife, and two of their three children. Suddenly, on the Diamond Vision screen, came our names, Doug and Marcus Hedwig. I thought, If it has to end, it’s ending with a bang.

I heard our harmonies resounding from the stadium’s giant speakers. I became aware of some of baseball’s greatest stars standing as we played.

“I was really nervous,” Marcus told me later. I put my arm around him and gave him a squeeze.

“You sounded great!” I said.

I resisted the powerful urge to ask him to play for just one more summer. I was learning (as all parents do) that despite loving your kids to bits, you have to let them go.

As the years passed, Marcus seemed to reject all that we’d shared. In high school, he spurned baseball. He favored his heavy-metal electric guitar over the tuba, which he’d started playing after our tours ended. I understood the psychology of this, but it still hurt. Sometimes, on our bookshelves, I’d catch a glimpse of the binders labeled “Anthem Guys,” where I’d saved the mementos and photos of our baseball summers. I just couldn’t bring myself to open them.

One evening in the fall of 2005, I got a call from my son. By then he was in college. Had I seen the game that night between the Chicago White Sox and the Houston Astros? he wondered.

“You’re watching the World Series?” I tried not to sound incredulous.

Yes, he said. He and one of his roommates had seen every game.

Weeks earlier, Marcus had amazed his mother and me by explaining that he’d chosen the euphonium, a smaller relative of the tuba, as his instrument in his college brass ensemble. He’d played the euphonium during our last summer tour. Had the memories of our anthem trips sifted down and left some meaning?

We chatted. I’d been having computer trouble, and with him on the line coaching me, I followed his clear, expert instructions. Soon the problem was fixed. I marveled at the new capabilities of my son — and hung up from our talk feeling deeply satisfied.

Sure enough, the journey of parenthood had taken a new turn. Marcus and I were traveling together again, in a whole new way. I couldn’t wait to see where we would go next.