Saturday, July 5, 2008

Another Step
Dear Joseph,
This week, your mom sent us a video clip of you WALKING. I mean, really walking. All of a sudden (so it seemed), the little baby we had come to love was standing on his own two feet and...well, walking.

As you read this now, you may wonder why in the world I find this to be so wonderful. After all, by time you read this you will be...well, reading and, of course, much older. Well, I will try to explain why Papa and others are so happy about your first steps.

Sure, we all went through these stages, but that was years, even decades, ago. Now, having passed most of the milestones of life, I still take delight in seeing you go through them. Your very presence makes me happy. To see you accomplish something new amazes me. You see, Joseph, when you are young it seems as if time passes slowly. Very soon you will want to be older, like the big kids. Very soon you will enter a stage of life where you will give your age in years and months because you will want to be sure people don't think you are one day younger than you are.

During our youth we all want to be older. We believe it is better and, in some cases, it really is. When you are 15 you will want to be older so you can drive. It is normal, and we all go through that time of life. It won't be so long after that that you will find yourself actually being older, in your prime of life. Then, in a blink of an eye (so it seems), we are older, and time seems to pass much more quickly. At that time, many years from now, you will wish you had the body of a younger person along with the agility and strength that body held.

So now, right now, when you are still young, I want you to savor every moment of every day. Like me, I want you to take great joy in each new accomplishment...like your first steps. Then, I hope, you will store those moments in your mind so that when the day comes, a very long time from now, when time passes quickly, you will have wonderful memories of these days. Even better, I hope you will have a grand child like yourself who will delight you with his or her new accomplishments.

Papa loves you.

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