Virginia Is For Families

I went down to the river today to take some photos. It was very cold. There was ice forming on the rocks and things. So I didn’t stay very long and didn’t take very many pictures. Then I found a nice, warm spot in front of the computer and downloaded some pics from Christmas that were overlooked during the winter illness phase.

Here is a photo of my granddaughter Kate. She is a lovely child with wide eyes and a beautiful mouth. But where did she get those ears? She is a very intelligent child and I love her very much. Maybe the ears are there just to make us laugh. Maybe she will make people laugh her whole life through with her delightful and clever personality.

And her ears are just a harbinger of all the wonderful things yet to come.

And here are Jillian and Lindsay.  They met for the first time this Christmas as they are from different sides of the family and from different parts of the country.  And they had a wonderful time twirling in a computer chair.

I realized today that I am almost ten years older than our new president. It’s the first time I have been older than a president. And I started thinking about how important it is for the younger generation to feel “their guy” is in charge.

They will be running things some day. These children will be voting and making their views known. I think that this is one of the things that is great about our system. We integrate our young people into the process at an early age.

We allow them to feel it is their country and they must work for it and make wise decisions to keep it going. They must put their “best foot forward” and not throw bombs from outside the perimeter as often happens in other places throughout the world where power is not so easily shared.

These are our children.

We hold our heads high.  We let them take the wheel.  Here’s another photo I took this past month of my younger son.   He’s taking some very good political science courses at VCU.

His ears don’t stick out as much but I’m not sure about the beard.  Does it matter?

Not very much.

I spent some time this evening with my younger son Zachary. Zachary is the “baby” in the family. I have participated in the rearing of five children and Zachary was the one who was used as a beach ball when we left them all alone for a few hours.

Now he is 6′ 4″ and very strong so he doesn’t get pushed around too much. When he first went down to VCU a few guys tried him out. And he just picked them up and planted them in the ground. But he hangs out with a more civilized crowd these days.

That is because he has a lovely girlfriend named Ashley who has volunteered to help him with his education. And she is doing a pretty good job. They are going to be living next door to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for the next year. It’s a whole lot better neighborhood than where he lives now.

So I was hanging out with him this evening when he decided to tell me something “I probably didn’t want to know”.

Don’t you hate it when you kids use that line? Hopefully yours don’t use it. But mine does and it just does stuff to my physical being that really doesn’t need to be done.

Zach is working as a window washer with his uncle and he is making good money for a college kid. But he can be very absented minded. So he tells me about putting up his ladder and climbing to the second floor. Only he forgot to set the bottom of the ladder properly.

The ladder was situated on some moss and it just “slip slided away” as Paul Simon likes to sing. So then he tells me how he held on to the window sill a little bit to “break the fall” and then “rolled and tucked” when he hit the ground. Or maybe he “tucked and rolled”. I guess you have to tuck before you can roll.

He is such a good athlete that he managed to turn his body into a giant shock absorber as it hit the ground. No one part took too much stress and thus parts did not begin to snap, crackle and pop.

His uncle told him that he had “never seen anything like it in thirty years of window washing”.

And Zachary didn’t injure himself. He’s sore but he just fell from a second story window and is doing fine.

I wonder sometimes about the stuff that he doesn’t tell me about. And then I just say a prayer.

After he told me this story he proceeded to tell me about a young man who he played football with in high school. They graduated just two years ago. This teammate and friend was killed this past week when an eighteen wheel truck went through a stop sign and broadsided him.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. And may all those we know and love be safe on the roads in the coming weeks and months.

Zachary and Ashley

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