Regular Life

Before the quotes, I have an unedited version of the picture I posted then pulled in “Grasping at a Straw.” A third opinion, from someone much closer to Ben and me than anyone here (sorry, folks), figured that my added text was what put it over the top.

For all who missed it on yesterday’s post, here it is before I get to today’s topic.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Dads page-a-day calendar in my cubicle is filled mostly with quotes that lack wit, insight, inspiration, and heart. In fact, I’m glad there are only a little more than three months left in the year.

That said, here are a few nuggets I’ve manage to sift from the crumbling soil. For some reason, each touched my heart or soul, jumpstarted my mind, or tickled my funnybone.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.
- Peter DeVries, author, The Tunnel of Love

I think the word “marriage” should be changed to “parenthood,” because I know lots of married people who don’t have children (we didn’t for almost 11 years!), and several unmarried people who do.

In college, I once asked a minister when he felt he became a man. His answer? “When I had my first child.” Unfortunately, some never make that transition.

Our children are here to stay, but our babies and toddlers and pre-schoolers are gone as fast as they can grow up — and we have only a short moment with each.
- St. Clair Adams Sullivan, author, The Father’s Almanac

This is painfully true, especially now that Ben spends a large chunk of two days a week in preschool. Just this week, Shannon and I couldn’t find the videotapes of Ben as a baby. We turned this tiny house upside-down looking, but came up empty-handed.

A couple nights ago, as I worked inside the house, Shannon was moving around some things in the garage. She found those videotapes. They had been inside the house at some point since our move down here more than a year ago, but got shoved back into the heat during a cleaning frenzy. No telling how many 100-plus degree days they spent sweltering in that box.

We breathed a sigh of relief when later that night we watched perfectly good footage of our month-old bundle of Benjamin-ity. It was gone far sooner than we could have imagined (but we were lucky the tapes were not).

Children are a great comfort in your old age — and they hlep you reach it faster, too.
- Roger Lwein, science editor and writer

I still feel pretty young at heart, but the extra responsibility and stress brought on by parenthood definitely makes fatigue set in faster than when we were childless.

A king realizing his incompetence can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.
- Marlene Dietrich

The parents can’t push the decisions off on anybody else, can’t blame anybody else for screwing it up. If they do the former, they’re not being fair to their child, and if they do the latter, they’re lying to themselves. Also, sons do see the paradox, but not until after their own fathers’ struggle to bring up responsible young men.

Click here to read the previous post I made with Dads calendar quotes. It features more quotes, some quite good. Oddly, in that Pic of the Week post, Ben has on exactly the same outfit as in the picture above.

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