A few weeks ago, we celebrated the
one-year birthday of baby Sam. This incredible little premie who
caught his poor mother and I by surprise in nearly every way is now a
crawling, babbling, cake-smashing infant who is thisclose to toddling
and talking. It seems like moments ago he was this helpless little
thing in a layette and every drop of formula consumed and every
diaper change was logged with the frequency and precision of a
scientific experiment. Today he's 20 pounds of laughter, blue eyes
and sparsely-toothed smiles. He is, in a word, a miracle.
Today, as I busied myself packing Sam
and his two siblings into the van for our typical round of Saturday
morning errands, my wife let out a chuckle while slipping a bottle
and a few extra diapers into the large red bag that has become her
constant accessory for the past 12 months.
“What?” I asked.
“It just struck me that, at 37, I
never thought I would still be packing diaper bags,” she replied.
I paused for a moment to roll my eyes
and nod in sympathetic agreement, then trotted down the stairs with
Sam on my hip and made sure that the two older kids grabbed their
coats from the rack on the landing and were appropriately dressed for
the day.
My oldest – our firstborn son who is
a miracle in his own right – is your typical nine-year-old boy. At
times he seems to be every bit the silly kid we've known him to be,
with a goofy sense of humor and an easy laugh. At other times, he can
seem a bit of an introvert – you can almost see that some of the
magic is disappearing from his world and he's trying to make sense of
it all. He is a voracious reader and his book selections oscillate
wildly... one minute it's Calvin & Hobbes, the next it's Stephen
Hawking. He is an incredibly complex kid and never ceases to surprise
me.
Next down the steps, just ahead of me,
is our middle child – my six-year-old girl. She is, beyond the
shadow of a doubt, going to take the world by storm when she's older.
Getting her through the teenage years is going to be hell on earth, I
can just feel it in my bones. I also sense that she's going to be
nobody's fool and, as a Dad, that makes me smile from ear-to-ear. She
can be moody, stubborn and argumentative with personality and
confidence that's inversely proportional to her petite frame. She can
also be carefree, silly and heart-breakingly sweet. Her teacher once
told us that she is a natural born leader. I couldn't agree more and
I can't wait to see the person she becomes.
Then there's Sam. The little guy who
has been a surprise every step of the way. We never intended to add a
third branch to the family tree and were shocked when we discovered
he was on the way. (I vividly recall the “you're what?!?!?” phone
call with my wife.) We were shocked when he decided to make the scene
six weeks ahead of schedule. And now that he's here, I can honestly
say that I'm amazed by him – by all of my kids, really – on a
daily basis.
Growing up has a funny way of altering
your perceptions. Deep down I knew that I have always been cut out to
be a Dad, but I never in a million years would have guessed just how
much I would grow to love and appreciate even the most mundane
activities in the ebb-and-flow of daily life. Rounding-up the kids
and herding them to the breakfast table, running errands, giving them
rides on the lawn mower after I've finished cutting the grass of my
very middle-of-the-road suburban home... all of it brings a smile to
my face because I know that each of these moments are fleeting.
I think all of this is rooted in a
deep-seated realization that time accelerates as you get older. When
you're a child, those few days before Christmas seem to be passing in
reverse. When you're watching the clock on the last day before
vacation, you would swear that the very laws which govern the passage
of time have made a special exception for you and your buddies. Once
you're out, summer days are endless and rife with adventure and
possibility. Parents are immortal. Fun is a God-given right. The
opportunities are endless.
As we age, however, and as the gravity
and unpredictable nature of the world sinks in, we grow to understand
that life is a bullet train punctuated by collections of these
wonderful little moments. The lost sleep due to comforting a child
who is convinced there are aliens in the closet. The hours spent
watching baseball games that end in scores of 37 – 2. The evenings
that you spend sleeping on the sofa because your child with the head
cold finally fell asleep in your arms and you don't want to risk
waking her up. All of these times that can be easily dismissed as
necessary inconveniences of parenting are defining moments and gone
before you know it. Viewing such events through this lens, you'll
quickly come to the realization that this is what it's all about.
Sometimes you catch glimpses of it,
like a shape you notice from the corner of your eye that disappears
when you turn to look. Other times it hits you square in ways that
are as unambiguous as they are breathtaking. The greatest blessings
and the most profound sources of joy can often be found in the most
trivial of routines.
So despite all the times we've lamented
the fact that our sports cars have become minivans, that our
vacations typically revolve around theme parks and that a simple date
of dinner and a movie now requires weeks of planning, we've finally
come to the realization that we wouldn't have it any other way. These
times are precious.
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