Words from A Loving Father
IN THE DOORWAY of my home,
wow gold I looked closely at the face of my 23-year-old son, Daniel, his backpack by his side. We were saying good-bye.
ffxi power levelingIn a few hours he would be flying to France. He would be staying there for at least a year to learn another language and experience life in a different country.
dofus kamasIt was a transitional time in Daniel's life, a passage, a step from college into the adult world. I wanted to leave him with words that would have some meaning, some significance beyond the moment.
But nothing came from my lips.
buy eve iskNo sound broke the stillness of my beachside home on Long Island. Outside, I could hear the shrill cries of sea gulls as they circled the ever-changing surf.
check valveInside, I stood frozen and quiet, looking into the searching eyes of my son.What made it more difficult was that I knew this was not the first time I had let such a moment pass. When Daniel was five, I took him to the school-bus stop on his first day of kindergarten.
designer sunglassesI felt the tension in his hand holding mine as the bus turned the corner. I saw color flush his cheeks as the bus pulled up. His
wow accountquestioning eyes looked up at mine.What is it going to be like, Dad? Can I do it? Will I be okay? And then he walked up the steps of the bus and disappeared inside.
booster cableAnd the bus drove away. And I had said nothing.
A decade or so later,
true religion clothinga similar scene played itself out. With his mother, I drove him to the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
nike maxHis first night, he went out with his new schoolmates. When he met us the next morning, he was sick. He was coming down with mononucleosis, but we could not know that then. We thought he had a hangover.A parent dies, and, instead of giving a eulogy ourselves,
custom usb driveswe let a clergyman speak. A child asks if Santa Claus is real, or where babies come from, and, embarrassed, we slough it off. When a daughter graduates or a son is married, we watch them go through the motions of the ceremony.
usb flash drivesBut we don't seek out our children and find a quiet moment to tell them what they have meant to us. Or what they might expect to face in the years ahead.How fast the years had passed. Daniel was born in New Orleans,
dual sim phoneslow to walk and talk, and small of stature. He was the tiniest in his class, but he developed a warm, outgoing nature and was popular with his peers. He was coordinated and agile, and he became adept in sports.
His finest hour,
unlocked mobile phones though, came at a school science fair. He entered an exhibit showing how the circulatory system works. He sketched it on cardboard. It was primitive and crude,
free softwareespecially compared to the fancy, computerized, blinking-light models entered by other students. My wife, Sara, felt embarrassed for him.
It turned out that the other kids had not done their own work--their parents had made their exhibits. As the judges went on their rounds, they found that these other kids couldn't answer their questions. Daniel answered every one. When the judges awarded the Albert Einstein Plaque for the best exhibit, they gave it to him.
