I was in a crowded gas station yesterday with my son. I had promised to buy him a juice on our way back from our drive into the mountains and we arrived at the peak time for soft serve ice cream, so we were having to maneuver through a line that stretched all the way up the center aisle of the store. I was in a good mood and Gideon was very giggly, so instead of taking him to the juice section, I stopped in front of a rack of steak sauce and fancy mustard. “Okay, would you like the A1, Liquid Smoke, maybe some of this Honey Dijon?” His mouth fell open as he tried to figure out if I was joking or…
A father's struggle to capture his children's brief moment of youth in words and pictures
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“Dad, what are you looking at?” My son’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. He peered at me with one eye, the other was held tight against the bright summer sunlight that was coming through the large window next to him where he sat opposite me in the booth. I blinked at the boy and smiled. He patiently waited for me to answer and lifted a spoonful of rootbeer float up to his mouth. “I was…” I started to answer, “I was just thinking. I guess… I don’t know. What was I looking at? I was looking at the future.” The boy slurped some more icecream off a white plastic spoon and nodded. “Oh, right. Dads can see the future.” “Well, yes, but not…
“Have you seen Clara?” I approached my daughter’s young friend who was standing a bit lost in the center of the fellowship room at the church building. I had just completed my second circuit through the building looking for my daughter but was never able to find her in the crowds of little kids that were wandering the passages and classrooms. I held up a chocolate cookie, “I wanted to give her one of these gluten-free cookies I found, but I can’t find her anywhere.” My daughter’s friend shrugged, “She was here,” she mumbled, “but she left. I didn’t really understand why. She said she was looking for you.” The girl pointed down the hallway to the left. “She went that way.” I looked…
I often write stories about things that happen in my children’s lives as a way of preserving their memories for them. There are fragile memories that I know they will someday forget, and it is my gift to them to wrap them in cotton and preserve them in a box in the attic for them to rediscover later on in life. But sometimes there are things that happen and I know they will never forget about them. And often I box these things up as well and place them on the shelf alongside all the other memories, simply so they can groan and quickly close the lid when they open it. “Why did you save this?!” they will yell down the stairs.And I will…
Where Are We Here? 