Happy 23rd Birthday Lance!
“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight….”
Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet
It’s the 4th of July, a special day for many reasons. For me, it was 23 years ago, that my son burst forth from my womb; perhaps not burst as much as dawdled leisurely along his way out—all 6lbs 8oz and 19” of him. My mother, Nurse Mary and Aunt Linda were all there; we filled our environmentally unfriendly Styro-cups with Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider and toasted that moment, in which lives, the real ones and the metaphoric ones, ended and began.
This post is a celebration. A celebration of those flashes that sneak up on you when you least expect it, out of the blue, on some seemingly insignificant Wednesday morning or Thursday afternoon. You find yourself walking down the path of nostalgia; through the diaper changing baby years, the “no, no, don’t touch that; no, no, don’t put that in your mouth; no, no, don’t stick that in there” toddler years and the Invasion of the Body Snatcher teen years, the ones where you kept looking at your kid waiting for his head to spin around, like in the Exorcist.
This post is a celebration of those moments, when at long last, you can laugh and pat yourself on the back for a job well done, because you know that your kid is all right, and today I know that my kid is all right.
Happy Birthday Lance! I love you!
