As a lot of my friends and peers are considering or dealing with having children, I am playing with my grandchildren. Yep, that's right, I am a grandpa. I had my beautiful daughter Sarah, at age 16. She gave birth at 21. It has had its downsides being a father so young. I'm glad to accept an awesome upside. I am young enough, and healthy enough, to thoroughly enjoy and participate in the lives of my grandchildren.
Last week I spent time with my grandsons, Justice, and his little brother, Micheal (we call him Mister, he's such a little man). I got to teach them how to hit a baseball. Justice was spending his last days as a five year old and Mister will be 3 in October.
After getting Justice to hold the bat right and in the proper stance, it took some coaching to get him to keep his eye on the ball and get a full swing. Then, magically....wham!... he hit hit one right out of the backyard, over the fence and hit the neighbor's garage. I don't know who was more excited, him or me.
Mister couldn't quite follow a pitch and get the bat around. So we took an old shoplight stand and made it into a perfectly sized T-ball stand. Whadda ya know, the little guy is a switch-hitter. We finally settled on his lefty stance. Man once that ball was setting still in front of him...look out. He couldn't get it out of the yard, but he could line drive it to the backyard outfield. In his excitement, and little understanding of the game, he would run willy-nilly all over the yard, and then fall down laughing.
We went to the beach at Lake Michigan. We grilled hotdogs. We built sand castle empires. We buried each other in sand and made huge, funny body shapes. A firetruck from the Gary, IN Fire Department showed up. I walked the kids over to have a look. The firemen were great. they let us sit in driver's seat of the firetruck, and then they took the kids for an impromtu ride around the parking lot. All day long there were fighter jets, practicing for the weekend's airshow, speeding just a couple hundred feet above us; giving us our own little airshow.
We rarely know where Life will take us. We can seldom plan for the best outcome. We never know what tomorrow will bring, or if there will be a tomorrow for sure. Days like these let us live thru all the others.
Now, I'm headed back to the high desert. If you see me out there, and I ain't smiling, please remind me of these things we live for.