August 3-4, 2024: A Proudly Tearful Tribute

[For thenext two weeks my blog will feature my annual Birthday Bests series, so by thetime I share my next regular post, we will have dropped my olderson Aidan off to start his first year of college. Do I need to say moreabout why I’m sharing a proudly tearful tribute post this weekend?!]

I’ve hadthe chance to pay tribute to mysons Aidan and Kyle quite a few times, both inthis space (where eachhas now also contributed a great Guest Post!) and in mySaturday Evening Post Considering History column.I’m not saying you’d necessarily be monsters if you didn’t check out thoseprior tributes to the two best dudes I know, but, well, why risk it? Check ‘emout and then come on back for more AmericanStudierDad tributes.

Welcomeback! I could dedicate a year’s worth of posts to paying tribute to my sons andnot come close to saying enough, so to keep things relatively focused (if nottear-free, obvi), I’ll just highlight one particular recent moment for each ofthem that exemplifies why they’re just the goddamn best:

--I won’tbore you with all the details, but my wedding day earlier this year turned outto be an exceptionally long and also impressively independent day for Aidan, ashe was running in a track meet that evening but wanted to be part of as much ofthe wedding as possible. So he ended up embarking on a truly multi-step odysseythat involved a variety of means of transportation and a late-night quest for away to charge his phone to get him the final few miles to his Airbnb (the firsttime he had ever spent a night entirely solo). When he did eventually get tothat resting spot, as he subsequently told us the story, he decided to take acool-down run to a nearby beach, where, and I quote, he “sat on a rockcontemplating life.” If you didn’t just gasp aloud at that line’s and moment’scombination of cuteness and sweetness, I don’t know if we can be friends.

--Aidan’sthe one heading off to college (sob), whereas Kyle just completed his junioryear of high school—AKA the hardest year in high school (at least in both oftheir experience), as well as one of the most exhausting any of us could everhave. Many of those challenges culminated with the three AP exams Kyle took,after which things calmed down a bit. Or at least they should have, but hestill had plenty to do even for those classes, including the very extensiveJunior Issues Research Paper (JIRP) about Aidan’s version of which I wrote abit inthis column. Kyle would have been well within his rights to mail that onein a bit, but my amazingly dedicated and inspiring younger son did the opposite—choosinga topic that’s deeply meaningful to him (climate and environmental activism,through the specific lens of Electric Vehicles) and putting in truly exemplarywork on it (including pulling one of his many junior-year all-nighters). I’vesaid it before and I’ll damn well say it again—no one and nothing inspires memore than my sons, in these specific moments and in every part of their identitiesand lives.

BirthdayBests start Monday,

Ben