His Daddy’s Son

Calfgrit8 turns Calfgrit9 today. Sadly, for him, he won’t get his birthday party till this coming Saturday (at Adventure Landing — laser tag for two hours).

Every day, this boy shows himself to be so much like his father. Strangely, this makes me happy and sad at the same time. He has my imagination and creativity and inquisitiveness. But he also has my introverted and self-centered personality.

He loves to play imaginatively by himself. He evens plays with some of my old Star Wars toys in the same ways that I did. Watching him play sometimes is like looking into the past at myself. As much as this makes my heart glow, seeing him as a reflection of myself, it also worries me that the personality traits he got from me will lead him to make the same mistakes become the same man that I am. I want him to become better than me.

But how do I bring out more and better traits in him when I don’t even know how to find them in me (if they even exist in me, at all)?

When he blows out his nine candles on his birthday cake, I’ll be making a wish, too. My wish is that he can rise above my genetics and personal example and become more and better than his old man.

Bullgrit