Saturday

It's been a typical sort of autumn Saturday in the Midwest today. Lynda let me sleep in a bit while she got up and got ready for the day. Then she went downstairs and got breakfast ready for the rest of the family. Then she left to go to the office for the rest of the morning. (It has become the typical thing for her to do this on weekends.)

I got some laundry done, changed the sheets around the house and then went outside to rake some leaves in the backyard. I got out my huge orange tarp and got about ninety percent of the down leaves onto it and then dragged the whole thing around to the front street curb. While doing all of this I thought of raking leaves and pine straw in the backyard of my childhood home. We used to gather up all of the pine straw and dump in along the side of the house in a sort of hollow that entered into the woods surrounding our house. On days when I wasn't adding to the straw pile (and don't worry, there were plenty of those days) I climbed that pile and jumped around on it and then out into the woods.

After working in the yard, I got some lunch ready for the kids, who had been playing together nicely all morning long. It was their typical lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. About halfway through lunch Lynda came home. After she got some lunch she laid down to get some rest and I took Grace on a bike ride around the neighborhood. It was nice to breath the crisp air and see Grace having fun on her Barbie tricycle. (Honestly, I don't know why we never pushed the tricycle thing when both kids were younger. It's got to make it easier for them to transition to two-wheelers later.)

Grace was having a lot of fun out-biking on her wheels as I plodded along behind her. She needed some help when she hit an incline, but look out whenever she hit the top of a hill. That is what's so great about Grace; she attacks life with such excitement and shows that excitement on her face all the time. She is so expressive in everything she does. True, that excitement does tend to create friction that I often rub against, but I have to admire the way she goes about things. And you can't deny the cuteness of a small girl, pedalling like mad on a pink tricycle while wearing a hooded jacket. Oh, and don't forget the constant talking and singing along with it.

Now, I am here (and most rarely of all) I am alone. Lynda (probably feeling guilty about being at work every Saturday morning) has taken the kids to the grocery store and then to the park. There is chili in the crockpot and sugar cookies cooling on the counter.

It's a good day so far.

New Look . . .

Do you like it?

I am sort of tired of the old Minimalistic white thing.

(Don't worry, I saved the HTML text so I can recall it if I find that this one doesn't work the way I want.)

(At least, I think I saved it.)

Of course, there is some customization to be done, and I don't think I'll do it all today.

Give me feedback. As always, I am at your service.

"She's like you."

Lynda and I were getting ready to go to bed a few Sunday nights ago, reviewing the events of the weekend, discussing what we did, when we did it, etc. and I said these words when describing how Sarah was awake in her room past 9 pm, drawing and coloring something in one of her notebooks.

"She's like you," I told Lynda while we were brushing our teeth. "She gets her head into some project and loses track of time."

This is very true about Lynda, a defining characteristic of her since I met her in college. I can't tell you the number of times at Georgia Southern and since during her professional career when Lynda has stayed up for a long time, completely unaware of what time it was because she was so immersed in the sentence she was writing or the problem she was designing. Heck, just minutes before, when we were downstairs (me watching a DVD, she on her laptop designing manuscript), I made sure to announce that is was 12:30 and we should go to bed soon. I was absolutely certain that she had been unaware of the time would have plowed on for another hour if I hadn't stopped her.

But, even as I said the words "She's like you" a bit of my brain shouted at me that I shouldn't do that to Sarah (and I also made a mental note then to write this post). To say "She's like you," while true in the spirit of how it was said, is a diminishment of Sarah's real personality. . . and it serves as a challenge to me (us) as a parent (parents). Biologically, Sarah and Grace (and Hannah to come) are a part of me and a part of Lynda, but the mystery and the thrill and, frankly, the reason to have children is to see how those parts of us become Them, something absolutely new. It's reassuring to see a bit of ourselves in our children, but if that is all you want to see, then you are missing the best part of it all.

I know what it was like for me to be a kid, but that was almost forty years ago. My kids have things going on around them that I never had, and I had things going on in my life that they won't ever have. So, I don't want to be a father to myself. I want to be a father to these unique kids that make their own choices and have their own, very interesting personalities.

I have to remember that when I slip into the short-hand of "She's like you" because they are NOT you and won't be. I don't want to diminish who they are and who they will become, and more importantly, I don't want to limit their opportunities and choices based on my own short-hand view of things.

They are themselves. And that means they are a mystery to me and to themselves. My job is to walk alongside them while they figure out what that means. Maybe right now I am holding their hands while we walk, but someday I'll have to let them walk ahead of me.

WWY do whatever it is you're doing?

You know what's been missing on my blog?

I think it needs a slow video of a professionally-trained (presumably) dancer using his body movements to spell out the blog name.

And he should do it r e a l l y , r e a l l y s l o w l y.

Right?

Well, I guess now my blog is complete.

An update on my developing cataract

You may recall that a while back my eye doctor discovered a developing cataract in my right eye.

Last night, the car headlight "halos" were bothering me a bit as I was driving home with the kids from our Group meeting. This morning, I discovered that if I close my left eye, I really can't see anything clearly with my right eye alone anymore. It's just blurs.

So, I figure I've got to do something.

If technology was advanced enough, I could attempt an eyeball transplant (as shown by crazy man Tom Cruise in "Minority Report".

Or, I could do the cleaner, infinitely cooler mechanical eye replacement, a la Geordi La Forge in "Star Trek: First Contact."

But, I think I'll go with the more attainable solution sported by "Airwolf" mysterioso Archangel. Give me some black construction paper and some tape and I'm ready by noon.