Me and The BOY...Skipping Stones Down @ Holy Water Creek

I miss my kids. I really do and it can really bother me sometimes. I think most readers here at the SHOCK know that I am a father of 2 grown children. My daughter Chelsea is 28, married w/2 young boys living in Greenville, SC. My son Ian is 26, engaged and still lives in the town where he was born and (mostly) raised...Holland, MI.


I see them once in a while and talk fairly frequently via phone or communicate using social networking technology tools.  But when I lament that I miss my kids...it is literally the years they WERE kids that I am talking about. I know it is a well worn cliche folks but it is NO joke or laughing matter...that time when you are raising your children goes faster then the speed of light. Before you know it...their childhood is over!


My memory of both my children can be looked at by me in a condensed form that truthfully goes something EXACTLY like this: I remember quite well their mum carrying them both to full term (Chelsea nearly 2 full weeks AFTER)...going into the hospital and watching them being born. 


Then things pick up the pace....diapers, real food, walking, big boy/girl pants, school, puberty, boys/girls, teenage angst, driving, graduation, college and then POOF, they were GONE! 


I want those days BACK...dang-it. And I am totally sincere when I remind friends who are parents of young children today...CHERISH every second of this. With digital cameras and movies there is simply NO reason to NOT document EVERY move they make. We did a fairly good job with film/paper print pictures and video...but man, what you can  do today with smart phone cameras and such...there  is no excuse for not documenting their lives.   


I want to skip stones with Ian and chase little Chelsea around the playground again threatening to tickle her FOREVER. I can hear her squeals and Ian's peels of laughter as I play "DADDY MONSTER" and wrestle with them on the floor, trying to tickle them both into submission. I want to read "Frederick" to them both just one more time doing my best Winston Churchill imitation voice...

I chuckle as I look at the picture at the top of this post, taken in 1989 (I believe). That is yours truly on the far right and my two little angels right in the front, center of the picture. A classic photo of us all here at the lake cottage (before this house I'm sitting in now was built). It's a great pic and an even sweeter memory.


But I do...I miss 'em and I think about those days all the time. Don't get me wrong...I love both of my kids every bit as much today as I did then...in a way even more. They are wonderful human beings and great adults. But once those little kids are gone...well it's forever so don't forget it!