Goodbye 2010!
This holiday season has been nice. Sometimes the end of the season makes me feel very melancholy and miss some times gone by, but there is always the New Year, pregnant with possibilities to look forward to.
We finally got some snow yesterday in Colorado, really other than in the mountains the first measurable snowfall. My family goes to the mountains for the holidays and spends time with the extended family. Usually up in the mountains we snowshoe at Thanksgiving and Christmas. This Christmas Eve morning I went for a hike in the mountains in just shirtsleeves with my twin eight year old nephews, so full of innocence, wonder and fun. The excitement of what was coming that night was thick in the air and talk of Santa and presents was burning bright.
We hiked, watched soaring hawks, felt the warm December sun on our faces, shared stories, pushed down some old, dead trees and talked about the varmints and critters that were surely watching us. Then we three stopped to do something "boys" have been doing for many years in the woods; peeing on a tree.
I had forgotten how the simple little things in the forest are so alive to a youngster, since both of my boys are big now. Simply learning a rite of passage like guys peeing while standing against a tree can bring giggles, air drawing and lead to scatological references.
We walked down the shadowed trail and made up some silly rhymes, just having a blast; family.
I felt in some ways like I had traveled back in time to the days when my sons traveled the same forest with me on adventures so similar and felt both happy and sad about it.
My nephews, though twins are as different as any pair of siblings. My high energy, lovable toe-headed nephew who wasn't too interested in rhymes, but more intent on insisting that I was going the wrong way back to the cabin at one point turned around and said, "Uncle Justin, you are WEIRD, but in a good way!" Several minutes later my other nephew put his arm around me and said, "Uncle Justin, you should write a book about this day, because I love you very much!"
Here is something he and I came up with that made us both giggle and just may show up somewhere in my publishing pursuits...
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Time goes so quickly as the heralding of another year indicates. I can hardly believe it is 2011. When I was a boy a teacher told us we would always remember the year 2000 because we would enter a new century and here we are eleven years past the big scare of Y2K and time keeps ticking with the sweeping second hand moving as usual...
When you get a bit older you begin to realize the value of time. Time becomes more precious as you look in the rear view mirror. When I hear a mother scolding her young one for something quite trivial in the grocery store, I always want to tell her to breath, wait and savor this moment when the innocent little thing that child is doing will be more of a fond memory in her future when an angsty teen than the current annoyance.
I would love to turn back the hands of time and walk through my front door when either of my sons were eight, like my nephews. Because then, they both would have come running with smiles, open arms and HUGE hugs as they leapt on me.
So, I think I will call my nephew and ask him what else we should write about. He loves to rhyme and it pretty darn good at it for a youngster. I am thinking we might have another author forming in this family and I will do whatever I can to support that.
Take some time with your youngsters to examine the enormous and the tiny! This year will be a year to examine... and then before we know it, it too will be in our rear view mirrors.
We finally got some snow yesterday in Colorado, really other than in the mountains the first measurable snowfall. My family goes to the mountains for the holidays and spends time with the extended family. Usually up in the mountains we snowshoe at Thanksgiving and Christmas. This Christmas Eve morning I went for a hike in the mountains in just shirtsleeves with my twin eight year old nephews, so full of innocence, wonder and fun. The excitement of what was coming that night was thick in the air and talk of Santa and presents was burning bright.
We hiked, watched soaring hawks, felt the warm December sun on our faces, shared stories, pushed down some old, dead trees and talked about the varmints and critters that were surely watching us. Then we three stopped to do something "boys" have been doing for many years in the woods; peeing on a tree.
I had forgotten how the simple little things in the forest are so alive to a youngster, since both of my boys are big now. Simply learning a rite of passage like guys peeing while standing against a tree can bring giggles, air drawing and lead to scatological references.
We walked down the shadowed trail and made up some silly rhymes, just having a blast; family.
I felt in some ways like I had traveled back in time to the days when my sons traveled the same forest with me on adventures so similar and felt both happy and sad about it.
My nephews, though twins are as different as any pair of siblings. My high energy, lovable toe-headed nephew who wasn't too interested in rhymes, but more intent on insisting that I was going the wrong way back to the cabin at one point turned around and said, "Uncle Justin, you are WEIRD, but in a good way!" Several minutes later my other nephew put his arm around me and said, "Uncle Justin, you should write a book about this day, because I love you very much!"
Here is something he and I came up with that made us both giggle and just may show up somewhere in my publishing pursuits...
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WHAT A DOG DOES
I was walking along
When I saw a dog
It was bending over
A big brown log
As I got closer
I saw what it was
It wasn't wood
It was what a dog does.
Time goes so quickly as the heralding of another year indicates. I can hardly believe it is 2011. When I was a boy a teacher told us we would always remember the year 2000 because we would enter a new century and here we are eleven years past the big scare of Y2K and time keeps ticking with the sweeping second hand moving as usual...
When you get a bit older you begin to realize the value of time. Time becomes more precious as you look in the rear view mirror. When I hear a mother scolding her young one for something quite trivial in the grocery store, I always want to tell her to breath, wait and savor this moment when the innocent little thing that child is doing will be more of a fond memory in her future when an angsty teen than the current annoyance.
I would love to turn back the hands of time and walk through my front door when either of my sons were eight, like my nephews. Because then, they both would have come running with smiles, open arms and HUGE hugs as they leapt on me.
So, I think I will call my nephew and ask him what else we should write about. He loves to rhyme and it pretty darn good at it for a youngster. I am thinking we might have another author forming in this family and I will do whatever I can to support that.
Take some time with your youngsters to examine the enormous and the tiny! This year will be a year to examine... and then before we know it, it too will be in our rear view mirrors.
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