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Children are like kites.
You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground.
You run with them until you’re both breathless
...they crash - you add a longer tail
...they hit the rooftop - you pluck them out of the spout
...you patch and comfort, adjust and teach.
You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly!
...Finally they are airborne, but they need more string and you keep letting it out.
With each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy
because the kite becomes more distant.
Somehow you know that it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the life line that bound you together and soar as it was meant to soar--
-- free and alone.
And how wonderful it is to watch our children soar!
When Steven was five months old he began to intermittently suck on his fingers in this peculiar way. Peculiar to me, because I had only been a thumb sucker, as had my siblings. I guess it never really occurred to me that children would do otherwise. Apparently, we were from a generation without pacifiers...a community of thumb-suckers :)
At first, we grabbed the camera at every opportunity, to catch him being cute. As had become our custom, we took him to get "official" monthly pictures. We would display the newest pose on our walls and send copies to the relatives to ooh and ahh over...that was back before the days of instant email and jpegs, we used to actually mail a photograph.
Now with myspace, facebook, smileboxes and blogs....we have more electronic shots and fewer hard copies laying around the house. Which is neither an altogether bad, nor a completely good thing. On the one hand when our computer crashes, we must set about to restore all the lost files, and on the other hand we can access the shots across the miles without the worry of dog-eared corners :)
I took him in for his "official" nine month photo at the JC Penney's Studio at the Tacoma Mall. Imagine my delight when under a cowboy hat of red...right in the middle of the "shoot", he went for his favorite fingers.
The photographer tried all of her tricks to get him to stop the distraction. But I asked her to please take the shot, for us it was the perfect pose. Oh, he grew out of the phase soon enough. In the midst of pictures with bears and balls, trophies and silly faces, this moment in time has stood the test of time.
A simple trip to the mall...and a sleepy little boy.
That little boy in a red cowboy hat grew up to be the father of my first grandson. And one sweet day, 26 years later, in a room filled with the Ohio sun...without even knowing it...Blake struck a perfect pose.
You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground.
You run with them until you’re both breathless
...they crash - you add a longer tail
...they hit the rooftop - you pluck them out of the spout
...you patch and comfort, adjust and teach.
You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly!
...Finally they are airborne, but they need more string and you keep letting it out.
With each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy
because the kite becomes more distant.
Somehow you know that it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the life line that bound you together and soar as it was meant to soar--
-- free and alone.
And how wonderful it is to watch our children soar!
When Steven was five months old he began to intermittently suck on his fingers in this peculiar way. Peculiar to me, because I had only been a thumb sucker, as had my siblings. I guess it never really occurred to me that children would do otherwise. Apparently, we were from a generation without pacifiers...a community of thumb-suckers :)
At first, we grabbed the camera at every opportunity, to catch him being cute. As had become our custom, we took him to get "official" monthly pictures. We would display the newest pose on our walls and send copies to the relatives to ooh and ahh over...that was back before the days of instant email and jpegs, we used to actually mail a photograph.
Now with myspace, facebook, smileboxes and blogs....we have more electronic shots and fewer hard copies laying around the house. Which is neither an altogether bad, nor a completely good thing. On the one hand when our computer crashes, we must set about to restore all the lost files, and on the other hand we can access the shots across the miles without the worry of dog-eared corners :)
I took him in for his "official" nine month photo at the JC Penney's Studio at the Tacoma Mall. Imagine my delight when under a cowboy hat of red...right in the middle of the "shoot", he went for his favorite fingers.
The photographer tried all of her tricks to get him to stop the distraction. But I asked her to please take the shot, for us it was the perfect pose. Oh, he grew out of the phase soon enough. In the midst of pictures with bears and balls, trophies and silly faces, this moment in time has stood the test of time.
A simple trip to the mall...and a sleepy little boy.
That little boy in a red cowboy hat grew up to be the father of my first grandson. And one sweet day, 26 years later, in a room filled with the Ohio sun...without even knowing it...Blake struck a perfect pose.
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