What Did You Do Today?

To my son Tommy,

You were recently asked what you did today and this week so far. You gave a five minute recap that went something like this...

Talked to parrot and pirate ship and alligators and angry bird and dragon and saw the gorilla, giraffe, and elephant. Rode helicopter and train and motorcycle and balloon and jeep. Went to beach and got toys and played with Gabe and Ryan.

Rest is not on the schedule for this vacation and you go and go and go until you crash. Then everything starts anew and you immediately wake up thinking and talking about doing all the things you did yesterday again and again. I hope you attack your everyday life with this eagerness and excitement. It is easy to look forward to sun and waves and boardwalks and rides. But if you can keep this up with everything else, your success in life will be nearly assured.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Dare To Be Different

To my son Tommy,

"Yes, his sunglasses are on upside down and yes we are aware and no we are not correcting him." That has been said often today by your mom and I. Sometimes it was followed by "You're welcome to try". If you haven't figured it out, you prefer to wear your sunglasses upside down. You are rebellious, you walk to the beat of a different drummer, you go against the grain.

And that is ok with me, and actually is sort of a Downey tradition. We buck traditional style even if sometimes it is not practical. For example, the ear things on your sunglasses definitely work better at keeping them on your head if they are right side up. But until you figure that out for yourself, you are more likely to kick in the shin anyone who tries to correct you. And that son is part of growing up Downey.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Should Vacation Be An Excuse

To my son Tommy,

Yesterday I mentioned forgiving deadlines can help in certain aspects of life. I want to stress that you have to learn when and where this is appropriate. I don't want you to think this gives you carte blanche to skip everything. Though you have to allow yourself to forget certain aspects, you still have to hold yourself to your other responsibilities.

Take for example this vacation. Now many people say "I don't have to follow that, I'm on vacation" with respect to their diet, or their resolutions, or what have you. That is ok and understandable for most, but I would encourage you to buck the trend. I am determined to upkeep the changes I have made in my life. I am still attending daily mass, still taking my vitamins daily, still blogging, still stretching daily, etc. etc.

It would be so easy to let all these fresh daily routines slip for the vacation. But honestly if I stopped, who knows if I could get it going again. You never want to waste all your previous efforts if you can avoid it. With a little continued effort for the couple days of vacation, you make the days when you are not vacationing that much better.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

We Leave When We Leave

Either last summer or the summer before, your mom and I found a mantra that keeps us sane every summer vacation to OCNJ. "We leave when we leave" might seem like the motto of Captain Obvious, but it saved us stress and anger and made it so we can begin enjoying our vacation even before the travel down is complete. Since we have no plane to catch, we have no timetable to follow except the one we used to impose on ourselves.

Sure I often preach planning and organization and promptness, but I have discovered there are certain events in this life that if you ignore or forgive the deadline you will benefit tenfold. The key is knowing which deadlines are forgivable. You will learn that keeping a deadline can have a cost. In the case of the annual vacation, driving each other crazy to make some arbitrary time could cost us some serious matrimonial harmony.

So as you grow up take note of when it is time to push for a deadline and when it is time to let things happen and glow with flow. Forgiving yourself some artificial deadline can save you from getting married too young or to the wrong person. Ignoring a deadline can allow you to find the courage to change careers to something that gives you more personal satisfaction. Bypassing a deadline can give you the patience to let your son grow and learn and advance when he is ready and not a moment before. And throwing out the hurry and hustle can get us down to the beach safely and happily.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

P.S. Using the iPad to blog for a bit of time, so excuse the typos and the formatting difference.

Live Life and Love

To my son Tommy,

    Your father considers himself a bit of a philosopher.  It stems from a ton of reading and years of tending bar and good bit of Irish blood which makes me able to BS with the best.  I have read many many books on philosophy and by philosophers.  Plato, Cicero, Aesop, Confucius, Descartes, Socrates, Mill, Thoreau, Mencken, Twain, you name it I have read up and studied and spent countless hours thinking and examining their works and searching for answers to the questions of this life and this world.  I read theorems and axioms and morals and just about every chiasmus known to man.  


     A chiasmus by the way is when you take the same words and repeat them in a different order to get some poignant deep quote.  The most famous example is probably the one by Cicero "Eat to live, not live to eat".  I know tons of these and some day on some trivia contest the fact that I know the proper name for these types of phrases will pay off big, like win me a half price beer.  It was one of these quips that pushed me to go ahead with blogging as well.   F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying "You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say" and that was the whole point of starting your blog.  I have something to say to you.  Of course I never really looked up the history of that quote so not sure where, when, or even if he said those words.  Your grandfather Leo, being a history major, would probably make me look this up and find the actual source.  Though your grandfather is a philosopher in his own right, he would make sure the history is right and find it in some periodical or tome.

    Always remember you don't have to read a bunch of old dusty books to learn a lesson.  Some of the most sage advice comes from the strangest of places.  I have learned lessons from song lyrics (Jimmy Buffet is my favorite for that) comics (Pearls Before Swine is currently one of my top 3) kids poetry (I try to read you Shel Silverstein poems all the time)  t.v. shows (You can learn a ton from even something as silly as The Three Stooges) .

   But the biggest way to learn about life and learn about yourself and learn about purpose is to live life and love.  That is what you and your mother allowed me to do and the gift you guys have given me.  You made me realize how precious life is and how much I can learn from a 3 year old .  I can watch a little boy go up and hug his mother and gain more insight about God and why we are here in that single moment than I ever have in countless hours spent reading.  I can see a budding engineer building a grandiose castle out of toy blocks and glimpse true imagination and a world that anything is possible.  You taught this old philosopher a brand new philosophy that makes sense.

Sincerley with love from your dad,
Leo

Things Go Bump In The Night

To my son Tommy,


     There are times when you wake up in the night and something has  startled or frightened you.  Last night at 2:30 am was one of those nights.  Not sure if it was a bad dream or some loud noise that bothered you. But whatever it was, I got ya out of your bedroom and your mom got ya back to sleep (after 2 hours or so) and despite being dead tired herself now, we were both happy to help.


     There are going to be plenty of times when things go bump in the night and scare you.  It happens to the best of us and still happens to your dad.  But usually when you get through the fog of just waking up, you can figure out that you have little to worry about especially when you have your mommy.  Of course when you wake up then you have to resist thinking of everything going on in the world and become truely terrified over what is and what may be.


     Anyway, when I came home from work tonight the picture above is the warm reception I received.  And let me tell you, you were zonked out..  I tried my best (or perhaps worst) to wake you but you were not having any of it.  So I snapped a picture and got to experience and relish an innocence in this world that can only be expressed by a sleeping child.  A vision and memory that will comfort me when I think of the things that scare me and to comfort me when things go bump in the night.


Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Ready or Not

To my son Tommy,


    17, 18, 19, 20 Ready or not hear I come!  Today I had to work late and got home close to 6:30 pm.  But a couple extra hours of work didn't stop us from having a blast immediately when I got home.  We played hide and seek for about an hour.  You will never win a hide-n-seek contest right now.  Many times you say "Ok Daddy you close eyes and count, I go hide in the closet" or some other subtle hint that lets me know where you are.  When we play, the seeker yells "yee" and the hider responds in Marco Polo fashion "hah".It is a tradition we picked up from an episode of one of your current favorite shows The Mighty Jungle.  You do great at counting to twenty and hiding your eyes without peeking.  I could find a million lessons and meaning of hide-n-seek or how some things are worth waiting for or how even if it is late doesn't mean it won't be great, but I think I will just let it be a simple childhood game that I had a blast playing.  Now if you will excuse me a very persistent boy now wants to draw butterflies and bumblebees and other various insects and shapes and such.


Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo