What Babies Someday Become

A decade ago, if you told me that ten years hence I’d be sitting in a bar at my oldest son’s first CD release party, I’d have thought you’d gone loopy. But that’s just where Joe and I found ourselves last night. I kept having to (figuratively) pinch myself to make sure this was real. I was in wonder, thinking, “How amazing it is to see what our babies someday become!”

Alan is generally a shy person. But up there on stage he seemed in his element. He possessed a certain charisma and a quiet but strong confidence and leadership that I first saw in him as a toddler interacting with his day care buddies, and later as teenager on the soccer pitch and basketball court. I can’t wait to see where these qualities take him as he moves through life.

At the other end of the bar, my daughter sat enjoying herself with a group of her friends. That too was a ‘pinch me’ moment…the fact that two of my three children are old enough to frequent bars. She is growing into a person I love to be around…she and I both have come a long way from the days in her mid-teens when I would regularly be in tears worrying about her.

So those of you reading this who are in the depths of teenage-hood, don’t despair: the butterflies that emerge at the other end are among the most beautiful creatures you will ever see!

Sanktuary, with Alan on the far left