Baseball with the Grouse

The Grouse and I have lately been taking up baseball together. Either in our backyard, or school playgrounds, or parks, we very often bring my glove, a yellow plastic bat, and some tennis balls. He also likes to tote around with my very old hard plastic Boston Red Sox souvenir batting helmet, which I've had for about 30 years. It's adorable to see my son wearing it now! 

Most of the time, Grouse throws me the tennis ball and I hit or bunt it. But he especially enjoys it when I swing and miss [shhh...I do this to make him laugh]! This makes him laugh a lot. And when it's his turn to bat, if he misses the pitch, he will remind me to say, "Almost!" Grouse likes this encouraging word. 

He has watched me and his big brother play pitcher, because now he's working on his leg-kick when he winds up to throw the ball. We may have a budding little athlete in our tribe! 

Bike Ride

Baby Grouse, all dressed up and posing for his much-demanded Sunday afternoon bike ride with his favorite whipping-post person in the world. He is our last child who can comfortably fit in my bike's child seat. As we're touring the neighborhood, riding along the Charles River, passing under canopies of trees, whizzing past ducks and Canadian geese, I often feel most at peace in those moments. It's just me and my littlest son, silently riding along together. Those are great times.   

Also documented: the affects of a long drought in New England. Our backyard looks like it was imported from sun-scarred New Mexico. 

Walking to School

As I previously blogged, our girls have started at a new school. It's fantastic, they're adjusting well, and they can walk to and home from it, with one of us or our great neighbor along for the walk. 

There's something Rockewellian about this set-up. It makes me want to live within walking distance of our kids' schools, as much as possible, in the years ahead. Especially when you have mornings like this, where your kids are happy, the sun is shining, the grass is green, it's warm outside, and sunlight bathes the lawns, the sidewalks, the porches, seeping through Old Glory hanging from a balcony.

Sunday Hang-out Spot

This summer, our family saw the need to identify a gathering-spot after our three hours of church ends each Sunday at noontime. I'm coming from a room at one end of our church building, Becky from a room kind-of nearby, and our four kids are scattered to the four winds. Our meetinghouse has a huge front lawn and a massive parking lot, and yet with all of this space, two adults heading in opposite directions down any hallway inside our church can't easily pass each other. There are dozens of kids buzzing around at the end of church, as our congregation prepares to leave; a second congregation moves from one block of meetings in one room to other rooms; and a third congregation arrives to start their Sabbath worship services. 

It is absolutely chaotic.

Our five-year-old, Mr. Moo, has been especially pleased by the choice of our meeting spot. He scampers up this tree, legs flailing and arms reaching, ascending higher. He flings down dead branches. He yanks at leaves. Shorts and shirts get stained, dirty, smeared. He doesn't give a flying fig. It's one of Moose's favorite things about being at church.   

Birthday Girl

Happy 40th birthday to my awesome wife! While this photo is a bit blurry, I love the chalk-drawn heart behind Becky, and her pink-striped shirt, and the memories of where we were when I took this photo. We're both now in our 40's (very early 40's, mind you), and we're excited for what this next phase of life will bring. 

Our kids are growing up and becoming more self-sufficient, though at the same time becoming busier with friends, school, church, and just life stuff. We catch moments of feeling, "OK, I/we have a bit of extra time to do this," or, "You know, I can get a long run in after work," or "Our kids are at school, so I can de-clutter the attic [again]." Little things, little snippets of free moments, that are becoming more frequent, if not lasting terribly long. But hey, they are quick wins.

What Becky does awesomely with these blocks of a smidge of extra time is to focus on herself, after so many  years as a mom of focusing on our family at every turn of her head, at every tick of the clock. She's been making much more conscious decisions about how she eats, how she feels when she eats, how much she exercises, how to model healthy choices. She is also in a time-demanding new roll in our church, as the leader of our congregation's women's group. As Relief Society president, Becky carries the concerns, cares, needs, and struggles of dozens of women in her mind. It's a lot to know about, a lot to try to help with, a lot to arrange how help can be provided.

She will do an amazing job.

I think I may be more excited for what the next ten years brings to my wife's life than I am about what the next decade brings to mine. Obviously, as a married couple so much of our lives are inter-connected, so seeing change in her life will often result in change in my life. What I mean is, I'm excited to see how she grows and progresses and changes as a mom, wife, friend, and daughter.

Happy birthday, Boo! The best is yet to come!   

The ride to Oktoberfest, 1996

This is one of my most favorite photos from my year abroad in Germany. Twenty years ago tomorrow, someone on a slow-moving train to Munich snapped this picture of me with my friends Nicole and Irakli. Here's what I love about this moment in time: 

Nicole was a die-hard Republican, fluent in several languages, beautiful, pee-your-pants funny. Irakli was (is) a multi-talented artist from Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the U.S. state), with a crazy sense of humor and penchant for laugh-out-loud public antics. 
I wore a beaded necklace that I had made myself months before. I miss it even now. I wore numerous t-shirts of different colors and didn't care about coordinating my clothes. It made me fit in better in Germany, where German men wore green jeans and yellow shirts at the same time, for example. I also love that I don't have a double-chin in this picture!

Before college, our paths would have very likely never crossed. 

We weren't friends for long, though. One month after this photo, Irakli left our university town to study elsewhere in Germany. Same with Nicole, though she stayed at our university through Christmas. We haven't spoken or seen each other in 20 years. But I still remember these friends for a moment in time. Irakli loved to not stand still when someone took his photo. He would make faces, jump up in the air, do karate moves, turn sideways, pretend to be barfing or snot-putting, pretend to be carrying invisible plates and cups, etc. His shtick struck me as hilarious.

Nicole knew I was politically and socially liberal. On the morning after the 1996 U.S. presidential election (remember, there is a 6-hour time-difference), Nicole called me around 6 a.m., screaming into the phone, "Dole won! Dole won!" I called bull, and I was right. She was legit disappointed. 

But back to this photo. The three of us were on that train to Munich, headed to Oktoberfest. Oh, my parents would have been so proud! The annual, weeks-long beer carnival was insane, and my friends and I loved it. We arrived in Munich along with hundreds of thousands of other people. We arrived with no thought about where we'd sleep. We had no way to call each other if we got lost in a crowd; this was before most people had cellphones. 

About sleeping: My friends and I crashed in the main Munich train station around 2 a.m. the night after this photo. It was cold, loud, dirty. None of us were sober. 

A few short hours later, I was honest-to-goodness shocked from my slumbers by a muzzled police dog, snarling and barking at me from about five feet away. My eyes scanned the scene, and I saw police officers holding leashes that were holding back dozens of dogs. I must have been so...ahem, tired...that I hadn't heard these dogs or the police earlier, when they first entered the station to ride it of the likes of me and hundreds of others of the great unwashed. I quickly hustled up off the floor and made for the exit with my bleary-eyed friends.

When you're an immature, carefree, along-for-the-ride, live-in-the-moment, selfless kid of 20, from a country where underage drinking is rampant and you're now living in a country where beer is more often consumed responsibly than drunk obnoxiously, this night was just par for the course. I look back on this trip. It's like I'm talking about a different person, like an exact-opposite twin.  

But that is me. That was me. That was my life two decades ago. While I can do without the riot dogs and the beer halls and the 300-foot living space that was my dorm, I do miss the time of life when my responsibilities were few. 

Friends, travel, experiences, immersing yourself in new cultures and meeting people from all walks of life - I don't get that fix nearly as much now as I did back then. It's a loss, and it's okay to mourn it, but it comes with my gladly-made choice to live the life I have now.  

XOXO from Philly

I love this photo of our tribe at the XOXO Philadelphia ad campaign exhibit. The only downside is that Becky isn't in the picture! We were in a rush to escape a brief, intense rain storm and to get to Constitution Hall for our scheduled tour. This was our only full day in the City of Brotherly Love, but we had an awesome time, and the bevy of attractions that we did not see only encourages us to make a return visit, maybe next spring. One of the key reasons we undertook this vacation - and one of the greatest blessings arising from having completed it - was gauging our family of six's ability to survive each other's constant, inescapable presence for over a week! We did it, we loved a lot of it, we grumbled through some of it, we altered some plans to accommodate pace and interest, and we came home with heads and hearts full of memories and xoxo's.  

The New School

Before Labor Day, Goose began fourth grade and Mouse began second grade. They were excited, as they've been each school year, to return to the familiar and their friends that the schoolday provides. But at the start of this year - and really, since early spring - both girls have been equally as nervous, sad, and anxious for the new school year to begin. 

Due to a redistricting plan finally being implemented, our girls - along with hundreds of other kids - would be attending new-to-them schools. Their new school is actually closer to our house, which is a plus. It's easier for my commute to and from work, as well. I can drive them in the mornings and not have to deal with cross-town traffic like the last four years. We all were impressed by the school and its staff during a private tour in June, then through a welcome-back picnic in August. We realized that a lot of kids in our neighborhood had been attending this school instead of the one our girls had been attending for the last few years, so they'd have friends more close by after school, including a new family in our Mormon congregation who moved in just before the school year began! 

Still, it was very hard at first when we broke the redistricting news to Mouse and Goose. They loved their old school and the friends they had there - including a set of sisters, one in Goose's grade and one in Mouse's grade. We could hear our girls' sense of FOMO rising when we talked about being at a different school from the ones most of their established friends would remain at. But then the set of sisters and their moms moved out of our town during the summer. While our girls would miss these friends, the sting was a little less now. 

So the new school year has begun. Our girls have adjusted really well to their new school, the new teachers and staff (who seem as top-notch as their old school's teachers), and new kids their ages. We feel that this school's PTO really needs the help of other parents. We're eager to help! We also love that the school's student make-up is majority-minority. It's the 21st century, Americans: time to embrace the multi-ethnic look of our communities a lot more. 

And not to sugar-coat it all: Our girls have been exposed to the whole host of swear words in the last few weeks, from hearing it on the bus to seeing it written on a bathroom wall. Maybe they heard these words before (I keep telling Becky to cut down on her public use of profanity!), but they were afraid or nervous to tell us? Goose has complained about too much homework. She also has had trouble finding her way around the school. This is a valid complaint, not something to brush off as looking for faults. We attended back-to-school night at their school this week, and the joint is full of side-hallways and staircases arranged in a dizzying maze. So, that whine is legit.

We're so excited that our girls are off to a great start in a new school. Transitions are hard. I've struggled to adapt to transitions in my personal life, work life, church life, all through my life. I like the comforts of routine. Our girls are the same way. But I've come to see the blessings of being more adaptable to routine-shaking paths in life, and this experience of adapting to a new school, new teachers, new kids, new everything will benefit Goose and Mouse as their paths in life continue, too.

"I Have Your Phone?"

This question greets me each day I return home from work. It's one of Grouse's first utterances nearly, but not always, every morning. When he's bored, when he feels like he isn't getting enough attention, when no one is around watching him or playing with him, he'll see me and ask, "I have your phone?" 

Sometimes, because it's early in the morning and I'm tired and no one else is awake, my answer is Yes. Sometimes, because I'm old and worn-down from the day and having him be focused on Dude Perfect 2 for five minutes will give me time to "re-enter" home life after being gone at the office, my answer is Yes. 

Sometimes, because I'm tired of being treated like a servant, my answer is No. Sometimes, because he has asked me countless times in the hope of getting a different answer by wearing me down, my answer is No. Yes, even I can resist this cute face, his soft voice, his bright blue eyes. After nearly a decade of parenting and a concurrent rise in age and decline in patience, there is still something resembling a backbone in dear old dad! 

Sometimes. 

Grouse's Time-Out in an Unlikely Spot

The "Moving Wall," a half-sized replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., came to the Boston area in mid-August. We took a drive to see it, because we've never seen either the replica or the real memorial. It was a moving experience for me. I sought out and found the replica etching for the name of my first cousin once removed, William Clancy, about whom I wrote in 2009 on the 40th anniversary of his passing in the Vietnam War.

Understandably but unfortunately, not everyone in our party of six was as solemn as we would have liked. Our Little Grouse kicked up a tremendous fuss because I would not let him near the computer where a volunteer with the "Moving Wall" exhibit was helping me search for the wall section, row, and line where I could find William's name this afternoon. For those of you who have seen me and Grouse interact, and maybe have come away thinking, "Man, Tim exaggerates how demanding his little son is," I'll have to note that the volunteer was also highly displeased by Grouse's rambunctious behavior. 

So Becky put Grouse in a time-out. On the steps of the bandstand. He howled and whined. Had trombones been playing, Grouse's shrieks may have drowned out those brass instrument's pronouncements. 

At least I can laugh about it now, more than a month later!

Scout

Here is Our Mighty Moose during our annual Cape Cod summer vacation in late August. He is wearing my old Little League t-shirt, which I think was his favorite shirt to wear this year. It warms my heart to write that. He's standing in the backyard of our friend's summer home, the place we visit each summer for a few days. Unfortunately, I was not able to join my kiddos, Becky, and our friend on this vacation. That was a major disappointment, but I got over it and our kids and Becky pretty quickly adjusted to a few days without Ye Olde Government Mule in tow!

Moose had been looking forward to pitching our tent in our friend's yard, mere feet from where either Becky or one of Moose's sisters took this picture. Our times for camping this year are quickly fading. This little guy loves being outdoors, so we've got to make it happen! 

As I look at this photo, a big part of me wishes I had been on this vacation with my brood. I wish I could be his exact age and be friends with Moose - obviously understanding that if that were so, there would be no Moose! Another part of me wishes that I was my son's age again on my own. 

Backward, turn backward, oh time in thy flight. Make me a boy again just for tonight.

Lunch near Independence Hall

Please understand: it was almost 100 degrees and 95 percent humidity outside when Becky snapped this photo of me and Our Little Grouse at a Subway restaurant near Independence Hall. I was feeling no love in the City of Brotherly Love at this time. Grouse insisted on being carried everywhere that morning. We were trying to find lunch on the cheap. We were trying to keep four kids and two adults relatively happy and entertained. 

What does that look like? It's Dear Old Dad not going zany over all of the history sites in a few blocks' radius. Our kids could only handle so much history, even though it was around every corner. It's trying to find a healthy-ish place for Becky to eat lunch. It's trying to get food in four little tummies as quickly as possible and getting a shaded place to rest tired legs and avoid sunburn.  

It was a success on all accounts! We left Subway feeling rejuvenated, ready to hit a tour at the U.S. Mint.

...Except that I got the U.S. Mint confused with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. They are blocks away from each other, and both give public tours. Except, the Fed was holding a security training when we arrived, so no tour for you were the words we heard. Major bummer. But now we have yet another reason to re-visit Philadelphia! It just won't be in the middle of summer next time. 

Do You See What I See?

Becky and our kids returned from swimming at a friend's house this evening after dinner -time. I used the extra time to run 3 miles at my work's gym, since I wasn't able to leave work in time to meet them for the swimming session. This was a night when a little voice inside me said, "no more." The old Timo-the-Dad would have quietly walked over to the disarrayed shoes and, without fanfare or thought of recognition, placed them in each of our kids' and Becky's shoe boxes (visible in upper-left corner).

I was comically gobsmacked that each pair of shoes was oh so close to their home. From bottom to top of frame, we have my Clarks shoes (which go upstairs, so not in the realm of critique here); Mouse's sandals; Moose's sandals; Becky's sandals; and, way at the top, Goose's shoes. I was polite about it all, but got my point across. My point was:

REALLY?!?!

Really, you can't take one more step and place these shoes where they belong? It's almost like a deliberate affront. No pair of shoes was left haphazardly strewn hither-and-yon in a sign of abject forgetfulness or lack of care. Instead, each pair was tantalizingly near their shoe boxes. They're kind of neatly paired, delicately positioned on the floors. 

Give them an A for presentation, but a C for overall effort and a D for follow-through. Like dutiful pupils, they all committed to do better. 

Saint Peters

If you ever find yourself northwest of greater Philadelphia, trying to figure out whether another day at Valley Forge or in Amish County is worth it, do yourself a favor and make a brief stop at Saint Peters. It is the quintessential village. Becky and I had an afternoon date here during our Pennsylvania vacation, while our friend Kim stayed home at her house minding ten kids! Kudos to Kim!

Here we are, enjoying a few hours together, just the two of us. I think every vacation we take from now on should include a built-in date for us! We meandered along a creek and sat on rocks, talking and people-watching. This was a glorious time. 

Free Entertainment, After a Scare

Goose, Mouse, and Moose in an elevator at the Hilton Garden Inn, on our last night of our summer family vacation. We were somewhere near Easton, Pennsylvania, home of the Crayola Experience. Don't tell our kids how close we were! We skipped Crayola this time. But maybe riding the hotel luggage cart compensates for missing out on the Crayola joint?

We would be heading home the next morning after I snapped this photo. 

And we almost headed home without that little dude in the black shorts and the white t-shirt. These three followed me from our 4th floor room to the lobby, where I was getting a spoon for our youngest child. I turned around, and Moose (in the white t-shirt) was nowhere to be seen. Our daughters, standing 20 feet away, hadn't seen him go anywhere. None of the adults saw him wander off. I frantically scanned the nearly empty lobby, but he was not around. I ran the 25 feet out to the front doors into a parking lot that houses cars for not just Hilton hotel guests but a half-dozen hotels and restaurants. In a second, someone could have driven up to our hotel's entrance, seen him outside, and driven off with him. The freeway was about 100 yards from our hotel. Before the cops would have arrived, he could have been miles up the freeway. 

It was frightening how quickly you think your life has irreversibly changed. Where the f* could he be? All of the other doors leading outside are always locked. He wasn't in the pool room, the gym room, the vending machine room, the two elevators. A security guard raced through the staircase, but returned to where I was without having seen Moose. 

To make a long and sickening story short, Moose was found, safe and totally unfazed. He had wandered off in the lobby, pressed an elevator button, stepped inside alone, knew which floor to go to, and had gone back to our hotel room. I hadn't brought my cell phone with me on what I expected to be an uneventful and quick trip for a spoon, so I didn't have a way to call Becky. [Only now, nearly two months later, do I realize I could have called her cell phone from the hotel lobby phone. You just don't think clearly in these situations].

Our reunion was sweet. I was overjoyed to see my son again. We had been apart for almost 10 minutes, but those were some intense, frantic minutes. Hopefully the lesson got through to Our Mighty Moose.

New Jersey Friends

Our Pennsylvania vacation's itinerary was planned so that we could maximize stopping by friends' houses to visit. We saw Boris and Kim and their six kids for a few days in the north-of-Philly area, and then made time to see our friends Keith and Rachel and their two kids in New Jersey/south-of-Philly area the night before we toured the Philadelphia temple.

Rachel and I attended high school together. We've known each other since junior high, though we didn't really become friends until the summer after high school. We both went to UMass-Amherst for college. Serendipity shined on our friendship: We lived in the same dorm (the 21-story John Adams tower), and our rooms were only one floor apart our freshman year. Sophomore year, we lived on the same floor, with many of the same friends we had made on the 16th and 17th floors our freshman year.

Rachel and Keith met as summer interns in a 6-week summer education program in our hometown the summer after our sophomore year of college. It was the same summer program that Rachel, Keith, and I had all attended in 1990 and 1991. Don't you just love the small-world vibe of suburbia? We've been friends ever since. Rachel and Keith got married in 2001. Becky and I stayed with them one night during our post-wedding vacation in 2005, on our way to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. 

Our kids got along well with Rachel and Keith's, even though our oldest is a few years younger than their youngest. On the afternoon of our visit, their A/C unit died. We had a hotel room about 5 minutes from their house, so we stayed there but saw them plenty the next day as well, at the Franklin Institute. 

We committed to make it down to the Philadelphia area again to see our friends, maybe this winter or in the spring of 2017. Yes, it was a 1o-hour drive, but it was well worth it and we all felt that we didn't get as much time together as we needed. Here's to next time!

Ganged-Up

From either knowing me in-person or through this blog, you might have an image of Yours Truly as a reading-loving, solace-seeking, running-crazed, generation-before-mine music geezer grandfather. I proudly sport those "honors." I've worked hard to project that image. But I want to assure you all that there is, inside of me, a heart of a child at times. I can goof off with the best of them.

Don't believe me? Take a gaze at this: One slightly overweight dad in his early 40's, fending off ten children in an unfamiliar basement, most of whom were armed with a dizzying array of pillows, all eagerly assaulting me as I cowered from their strikes. My ears buzzed with the cacophony of nearly a dozen high-pitched voices. My knees ached from sitting so as to try to protect the da-duh dee-da's, and my back was bowed as boy after boy scampered up my spine to inflict carnage from above.  

And I loved every moment of it. Really, I did. Kids who had earlier been scattered throughout the house sprinted downstairs as my squeals pierced the basement walls. These kids stopped what they were doing, separately or in small clusters, and ganged-up on little old me for about 10 minutes. I was a sweaty mess afterward. These brief moments of our vacation were among my favorite times of our entire trip. When you can make a roomful of kids laugh at you, and with you, then you've done some good. I'm sure these kids will descend on me again on our next trip to clean my clock again, but I'm looking forward to it! 

Valley Forge

Our boys the Moose and the Grouse had a field day playing at the wide-open expanses at Valley Forge National Historical Park. I am a sucker for U.S. national parks, and made sure to bring my passport book to stamp the Valley Forge logo into it. For a place where not a lot of actual military action took place, it is a stunningly serene and massive site. 

As Becky and I, with our friends Kim and Boris, walked some stretch of the park, our four kids and our friends' six kids scattered before us. We got to have some much-needed adult conversation. And I think all of the adults realized that none of us knew a lot about Valley Forge's significant in our country's history. 

It was a cool mid-summer Sunday evening. The sun was bright but not menacing, and there were little humidity in the air. Dare I say that weather-wise, it was a perfect evening for a stroll. I had visions of running and bike-riding through the park on a future visit. Due to our late arrival at the park, I had 5 minutes to sprint from our Blue Bomber mini-van into the visitors' center, stamp my passport book, and look around before the center closed for the night. Next time! 

Our friends encouraged us to take a family portrait in front of a building, which our friends have also used as a family picture back-drop. So, here it is below. We didn't plan to all wear some blue and/or white clothing; it just turned out that way. We'll be back, Valley Forge! I want to see you in the fall, and under a blanket of snow, and in early spring, too.

Philadelphia Temple

One of the three main reasons we took our family's summer vacation to the greater Philadelphia area this summer was to attend our church's Philadelphia temple open house. The other two reasons? To see great friends and...oh yeah, we need an annual family vacation, and this trip was a trial-run to see how we'd all do together for 7 days. We got tickets to the first day of the Philadelphia temple open house. It was a beautiful tour, and as a huge plus, all of our kids behaved well in the quiet sanctuary that is an LDS temple.

Our youngest, the Grouse, behaved by taking a much-needed though later-in-the-day-than- normal nap, on my shoulder. By the end of the tour, my back ached from having carried him off-and-on for hours this day. And when he did awaken from his slumber, Grouse was so uncertain over what we were doing in this new structure that he clung silently to me. Bonus!

All laughs aside, being in one of our church's temples with our whole family was very meaningful. Kids cannot go inside a temple until they're 12, and even then they have limited freedom-of-movement inside. So to tour the inside of temple with all four of them was, for us, a little slice of heaven. 

 

Becky knows that I like to joke that most LDS temples so-named after the city they serve (like the Boston temple, the Dallas temple, the Toronto temple) are miles -- in some cases, many miles -- outside of actual city limits. Of course, it all makes sense. The cities are built up, it's too expensive to own land in the heart of a metropolis, the temple name should be the Boston temple and not the Belmont temple. I get it. I do. But it's still fun to joke about. But the Philadelphia temple? Right in the heart of Philadelphia. We love that. Millions of people will see it and wonder, instead of happening upon it while out for a drive in the suburbs of many other towns where an LDS temple is located. 

Here is what Our Little Mouse wrote on her visitor card after our tour concluded:

"Thank you for the tour. I liked the sealing room. Before we got to it I was very [anxious] to see it and I am very [anxious] to see it again when I get my temple recommend in 4 years." I love this little daughter of mine!

Somewhere

...a little boy once spent a lot of time basking under a leafy tree in eastern Pennsylvania. He was enjoying a few minutes of quiet time outdoors, after having spent hours in his parents' Blue Bomber mini-van driving from Massachusetts to Lancaster County. He hated the humidity (the apple doesn't fall far from that tree!) and had to pee. He was embarrassed to relieve himself against the tree or the brick wall of the shopping plaza. Maybe he dreamed of the new Star Wars movie coming out at Christmastime, or wondered when this blasted day of driving would be over, or wished he could watch even more cartoons in the mini-van.

Meanwhile, his inquisitive father looked on, wishing that he could, for a moment, see what his little boy was thinking about or dreaming of or wishing for. 

Transition

I purposefully didn't touch this scene or pick up all of my old toys, now used daily by my son. This was as he left his favorite toys on the night before he started Kindergarten. 

It warms my heart to have seen Our Mighty Moose play with my old Star Wars and G.I. Joe stuff over the last few years. He and I bond better, and spend more time interacting with each other, through LEGO's and baseball tosses in our backyard than through my old action figures. I'm not sure why that is. This isn't to suggest that he and I don't play with these relics from my own childhood; but they're not our first draw together. 

Of course, being the nostalgic softie that I've always been, this scene moved me on this momentous night. Tomorrow would be the official start of a new era in his life, and ours. Gone were the times when Moose could spend any amount of time, most any weekday, playing with these toys. School would now fill most of his waking weekday hours. 

So I mourned at this scene a little bit -- no tears, just a quiet moment of bittersweet reflection. And then I read Moose books at bedtime, and told him a story from my younger years, and lingered in his bedroom longer than usual, and kissed him goodnight, and said a prayer for him, and thought back to earlier times of his life. As he fell asleep, I left the room and closed his bedroom door. Literally, a door closed. Figuratively, another one did, too. 

But a new door would open tomorrow, on a new day and a bright new chapter for him.