Passing Torches

For the 2, maybe 3 people who actually read my blog, I know I've kind of let it fall by the wayside. I promised you the musings of a single dad, and I have failed to deliver. But someone a lot prettier than me (oh, it's possible, believe it or not) convinced me to start writing again, and she was right. So here I am. What's on my mind, you ask? My son. Yesterday he was feeling a little sick, but he livened up a bit and started playing and handing me his toys, silently asking me to help him put Mr. Potato Head together. He's 17 months and can say very basic things like "thank you" and "da-da" and "loveoo". The rest of it is babyspeak, but I understand completely. As I sat and stopped him over and over from pulling all of daddy's DVDs down, I looked at him and realized that he is all that's best in me, and that I would literally spend all the days of my life, from this moment to the next, helping him to grow into a good man. It's a very basic instinct, one that is inherently coded into the DNA sequence of all parents: the desire for our children to surpass us. Did you know that the median age for pregnancy in America is roughly 24? That means that in our lifetime, we only have an average of 24 to truly live for ourselves. The rest of it is spent preparing our children to live THEIR 24 years in preparation for preparing THEIR children, and so on. I've heard some parents complain that they never have time for themselves because of their children, and I think that's an incorrect statement. We are all part of our own legacy, another link in the chain. Our children are extensions of ourselves, just as we are of our own parents. So to live your life for your child is, in fact, not only to live for yourself, but your parents and your children's children and so on and so forth. There will always be a part of my mother and my father in my heart, even when they're gone. And there will always be a little piece of my soul within my son, and he will pass on the things he's learned from me to his children, and with that, he will pass me on as well. And that, to me, more so than any promotion or any job or skill or reward…..that is really living.