I am very introspective. I spend a ton of time reflecting, reviewing and planning my life. I actually virtually go into hiding around December 15th as I look back on the year and plan the next. So I find that I am doing that again in the month of June to be pretty interesting: The Boy just finished 8th grade and is entering high school in August. Yesterday at his graduation ceremony, it occurred to me that I remember the very first time I laid eyes on him in the hospital right after he was born. He was gooey and blue and VERY pissed off! I remember holding him and thinking, Good grief, this is a WHOLE person...just really short! And now he enters high school, in the middle of growing up. He is such a good boy. He is smart.....he is REALLY smart. But most importantly, he has a good heart. He is good with his boogerie little sister, The Girl even though she is 4 years younger than him. I find that to be amazing. He teaches her (especially when she is stuck on her math work). So I look back and I see that these past 14 years and I think of some of the smart things that I did: the day we brought him home from the hospital, I measured his foot....it was exactly the length of my index finger on my right hand. I measured from his hip to his ankle.....it was tip of my right index finger to my thumb when I spread my fingers as wide as I could. I started writing letters to him when he was 6 days old. I documented the top songs, top book, political activity, how the White Sox were doing (the Cubs arent a Major League Team, so I didnt bother to include them OR the Kane County Cougars), the Bears, the Hawks and the Bulls. I included EVERY new cute word that he said (ambulan-dance was his word for ambulance) and there were dozens. But I also wrote down advice about how to look at the world. I have done this twice a year for the past 14 years. Tomorrow, I will pen the 28th letter to him. When I am done with them, I seal them in envelopes and write his name on them and date them. This way, when I am dirt surfing, he can open each letter and hear me speak directly to him. Life is passing by on an accelerated basis. As I get older, it is more like driving a McClaren P1 at 214mph. My advice to all parents is to stop and smell the roses. Life gets busy as heck and if you arent paying attention, you miss some of the most important things....which are ALWAYS the little ones. Write them down and leave a legacy for your kids. When The Boy was 7 years old, he made a birthday present for The Girl.....he drew a 10 page story book about an adventure that he and she was on, complete with both the written story and the pictures. It was her very favorite present that year. I only hope to God that I can still find it. When I asked him where he got the idea to do that, he said, Dad, you do that for us EVERY day when you are out of town for work......I just thought shed like that. He would always ask me why I was handwriting stuff around Christmas and his birthday and I would tell him the process. He apparently liked it enough to pay it forward. They do what you do, NOT do what you say. The End.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 21:11:37 +0000
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