Happy New Year

To my son Tommy,

Years come and years go.  As you grow older these years slip away faster and faster.  As an end approaches on the horizon, the pace of the race seems to approach the speed of light.  That is why we cling to the memories and try and preserve them for all eternity, thus these letters to you.

The past year has seen good times and bad times.  You have grown up so much and continually amaze me.  You have many firsts under your belt and we look forward to many more.  I remember your first day of nursery school, or as they say at St. Agnes, Pre-K 3.  You had days where you were upset to go, and then just four hours later you were upset to leave.  You have found good friends and great teachers and you have sparked that inner need to educate and experiment and learn.

You aren't the only one who has seen a shift in their learning curve.  Your mother this year has dazzled and impressed as she went back to school for nursing.  Though when she becomes a full fledged nurse it will definitely help our family, your mom will be following her passion and it will be good for her too.

Though your father hasn't hit the school books this year, that doesn't mean he failed to learn anything.  Setting out on a personal mission to write to you every day has let him live a well examined life.  I have learned to love deeper and appreciate more.  I have gone back to church and examined my soul.  With your mother, we have quit smoking when we started examining our health.  I have made great strides in growing with you and your mom this year and I plan on only going further.

Two thousand twelve also saw many trials, tribulations, and losses.  We have seen hurricane and super-storms devastate many.  Fiscal cliffs and financial insecurity made us feel like money is tight year round.  On the news, we have seen troubled souls, who never learned the value of life, do despicable things that made me cry.  On a personal note, we have lost family members and seen other members of our family suffer from health issues and the like.  Yet somehow we have not lost our hope.  In the face of such tragic events, we have searched out those small moments of love and kindness that can only be described as a glimpse of God's grace.  We have availed ourselves with the blanket of security provided by such a close and loving family.

All things considered, the past year has been fairly good for our family, in my humble opinion.  Did everything go our way?  Not by a longshot but many times you need life to not go your way so you can learn what is most important about living.  I am happy that I decided to write down these words and events so you can look back year after year and decide for yourself if this was a good year.  So...To my son Tommy, I wish you a very very Happy New Year.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Angel Brigade

To my son Tommy,

We are under 30 hours left for the 2012 year and the last few grains of the hourglass will soon pass for this year.  New Year's Eve is another one of those man made arbitrary times and we are supposed to examine our years past and resolve to do better as we move forward.  You know how I feel about these man-made concepts.  I think you should constantly examine the past and resolve to do better in the future all while really living in the present.  I believe you should do that every day of your life and not just the last couple days of the year, but I suppose the end of the calendar year just seems like a natural time to pause and reflect for everyone.

You, lately, have mentioned you are scared as we put you to sleep.  I know it is a stall tactic but I figured I'd try to address it.  So we started adding the Michael the Archangel prayer to our nightly prayer routine, and I have started teaching you about angels.  I tell you how they are there to protect you and though you might not be able to see them they are there in your heart and your mind and all around making sure you stay safe. Some don't believe in angels but then again some don't believe in much.  Your old man believes and is certain that a couple times in his life there has been an angel on his shoulder watching over him.

Sadly, we added a couple extra angels or souls to your protection brigade this year.  Though we don't have them physically in this world anymore, they are still here looking after us, just like so many of those who have left this world for the next.  The souls looking after you are many, from people we have lost this year like Great Grandmom Frazier and Great Aunt Patti, or in recent years like Baby Sal, or even years ago that you never even met like your Great Grandparents Delores and Charlie, and even people both you and I haven't met but touched our lives just the same like your Great Granddad Sal or Monsignor.  These are just a few of the people I remember in my prayers every day and just a few of the people that I believe are looking down and watching out for us.

The whole angel thing might backfire horribly on me though.  Instead of strengthening your resolve and alleviating your fears as you lay yourself down to sleep, it seems to have supplied you with another stall tactic.  You want to wait for the angels to come and don't seem to understand when I say they are already with you and protecting you.  However I will not fall into the trap and begin thinking you just don't understand, because if the year 2012 has taught me anything, it has taught me to never underestimate your ability to get it.

May all those who have gone before us always be in our hearts, minds, and lives.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Sharing Time With All

To my son Tommy,

I have noticed on more than one occasion I have suggested that you are spoiled by all the gifts and such that you have.  I hope you realize that I am just teasing and don't think you are spoiled.  You are one of the most appreciative children I know.  You are happy with just about anything you get and very thoughtfully always remember to say thank you for the gifts given to you.

The picture above is you dressed up in some of your Christmas gifts.  You said you looked just like mommy when she goes to school.  You have an uncanny ability to play with almost every gift you get and every toy you have.  Old and new alike you give pretty much equal time.  It makes decluttering and giving away old toys a very difficult decision.  Soon though I think you will start making the selfless decisions and you will start asking to donate your toys to worthy causes.  Not sure why I think that will happen within the next year but my gut feeling says it will.

Though you get many gifts, something deep in your soul seems to keep you from letting it change you.  One of your favorite toys is an old cardboard box with eyes cut out and when you put it on your head you pretend you are a robot.  With an attitude like that, and a cuteness too, it is hard not to want to give you more and more.

If you can transition your ability to share time among toys to something similar with your adult relationships as you grow, you will have so many great friendships.  Too many times in our life, especially as you grow and become a parent and get busy with work and wife and who knows what else, our relations with our friends suffer like an old toy that gets shelved at Christmas time to make room for the new.  Every day you rediscover your old toys as if they are brand new and I hope to model my 2013 year after you and share some time with some friends that I have lost some of that connection with.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Boxes Boxes Everywhere

To my son Tommy,

As I came home from work, I was greeted on my doorstep by boxes and bags filled with recyclables.  It is a sure sign that you were extremely spoiled this year during the holidays.  It is also a sure sign that we as a society haven't grown passed our necessity for packaging.

I always wonder if a toy store would do well if everything was out of the box.  What is this obsession with packaging with all our goods?  I am sure the sales "scientists" have determined that items sell better when they are in a blue box 20 inches cubed with stars on the top right that smell like oranges.  I am also sure the people who supply boxes for just such a purpose are great people and need jobs too.  I just need to question if it is necessary.  Tree pulp wasted making cardboard, gas wasted with the extra weight to freight, time wasted taking the item out of the box, and on top of that the garbage people have to pick them up and hopefully get them to a recycling center so we can lessen the tree pulp wasting the next time.  It doesn't make  much sense to me.  Not to mention I think there is a special place in hell saved for the creators of toy packaging especially since this year they decided to make it so you needed a phillipshead screwdriver to get many of these toys out of the box.  Last year they seemed to be heading in the right direction of making it easier to get the toy out of the package and 2012 seems like an about-face on the topic.  Not that I am bitter  or anything.

This is what you have to do in your life to make a difference.  You can't just accept the status quo but you have to look at everything with a critical eye and say "Why do we do it that way? Wouldn't it make more sense to do it this way?"  This is how innovation, change, and a new normal come about.  You question and suggest change.  You research and find out that toy packaging makes it more likely the toy will survive the long haul trip through rough seas from China to some longshoreman (assuming they are not striking) in Jersey.  I just hope you find yourself in a position to actually effect change.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Wasn't Me

To my son Tommy,

There I sat, listening to the homily during the mass, and from behind me came an audible yawn.  The poor guy who was the culprit had sniffles and a cold and was obviously up all night sick.  He goes to weekday mass all the time and meant no disrespect I am sure but the yawn got the better of his stifling skills.  But the audible distraction threw our priest for a loop.  Now if you drew a line between the priest and the yawn, the line would go directly through my seat.  I resisted the urge to yell out, "It wasn't me" to make sure Father knew I was intently listening.

There are going to be times when you will be the mistaken culprit.  You have to learn as you go when to deny, when to prove your innocence, when it is enough that you know you are innocent, and even from time to time take blame for something not your fault.  It is one of the more difficult concepts to master.  It is human nature to point to the real culprit and excuse yourself from any blame.  But from time to time, it is just not the right thing to do.

Your grandfather Leo showed me by example when discretion was the better part of valor.  Through my childhood, he would occasionally get in trouble from my mom for things I did.  I was an only child so, if we didn't happen to have a pet at the time, it was usually either me or him that left the toilet seat up or messed up the living room.  I watched him as he took the heat for something he and I both knew I did.  He never said a word and just took it.  Occasionally when I was in deep water with your grandma Roro,  he would even stand up and take the blame purposely.  Here he was going out of his way to save me.  It took many years for me to understand why.

Your grandpa Leo also taught me to take blame and give a sincere apology if a lady passes gas near you.  I remember walking down the supermarket aisle with your Great Great Grandmom Kidwell and she was farting so much it sounded like she was puttering down the aisle on a motor scooter.  Everyone was looking funny at her, so I had to step in and take the blame and apologize over and over.  I still laugh about that to this day, God rest her soul.  With your mom and her crohn's disease, we may have plenty of opportunity to practice this skill through out our lives.

There is, of course, a great example of someone else who took blame for what others had done.  He epitomized it with the words, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do"  So if I get labeled as the 7am weekday mass yawner, so be it.  I guess I can follow some good examples and show some sacrifice and take the blame.  Just like I will probably take my fair share of the blame of things that happen around our house as you grow up.  Of course we can both just try to blame a fish named Mo for messing up the living room.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Wisdom Of A Husband

To my son Tommy,

I would say on a man's scale of 1 to 100, I fair about a 75 on the husbandly wisdom scale and that number is (hopefully) constantly growing.  That 75 is probably good enough to impress most men who use the same universal scale.  However my number doesn't change when put to your mother's scale.

Women have their own scale when it comes to husbandly things, and that scale isn't even universal from woman to woman, and perhaps even task to task and situation to situation.  Your mother uses a scale that probably ranges from 1 to 200 or 300, but I have seen certain women who use a scale up to 1000 or higher.  And yet the score never changes no matter if you use the man scale or the woman scale.  I only bring this up because the anecdote I am about to relay will only impress some men with my above average thoughtfulness and most women will consider my actions common sense and wonder why it is newsworthy.  Thus the difference of the sexes remain and I offer no solution.  It is the way of the world and there is little you can do about it, so I have learned to accept it.

Last night, we got home from the holiday hoopla and everyone was drained.  You had to really twist her arm and bully her into it (can you smell the sarcasm), but your mother and you had settled on the couch for some cuddle time.  I had plopped my big behind behind the computer monitor to blog.  I think I have mentioned before that my blogging is usually free form train of thought and rarely takes too much time.  As I was more than halfway done, I heard the low rumbling of some serious zee sawing coming from the couch.  You and your mom were off in dream land dancing with sugar plum faeries.  I finished my computer time and regarded the scene on the couch.

After watching and soaking in the vision of mother and child, while trying to separate it out from a rather unmatching sound like a chainsaw, I realized I was at a crossroads.  Every manly instinct in my body screamed "Let them be" and "Don't you dare put an end to it" as my gut reaction was to distribute one kiss per forehead and off to bed I go.  Your mother has trouble getting to sleep so if she is getting quality snooze time, why screw it up?  This is where I also realized how much I have grown (or been trained up) as a husband.

I went over and gently woke your mother to give her the opportunity to decide.  Did she want me to take you up?  Was she going to sleep down here?  After taking you up to bed, your mom soon joined me upstairs to hit the hay.  I admitted to her that I considered leaving her and you sleep but only didn't because I figured she would wake up upset.  She confirmed that I had made the correct choice and I could feel my number growing from 75 to 75.01.

Just a caveat, it is not the action that made me grow.  For each woman there is a different correct choice and what works for one is totally wrong for another.  The reason that my husbandly wisdom level went up is because I knew the right choice for your mother, my wife.  Both your grandfathers have given me advice to try to increase my husband score and they have both warned me that it will only get worse.  Perhaps some day I will get to 100 which I will think is the epitome of being a husband and your mother will think "Hey he gets it right half the time" which is about the best any man can hope for.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Perfect Christmas

To my son Tommy,

Your mother has this picture of Christmas morning securely ingrained in her head.  She pictures you coming down with wide eyes and excitement as the flash of the camera futilely attempts to capture the magic of the moment.  She works so hard to create that moment for you (and her) because she remembers that moment from her childhood.  So when you woke up a little after zero three hundred hours this morning and refused to go back to bed and started down the steps,  you could almost physically see her dreams dashed.  Since the alternative of handcuffing to your bed seemed a bit extreme,  I told her we better get down and enjoy the moment for what it is.  One thing I have learned well over the past four years is that even the best laid plans can be dashed in a blink of an eye by even the most innocent actions of a child.

Luckily I had turned off the computer and the tree lights and the TV and every other light in the living room so there was only limited residual light from the bathroom lights being on down the hall.  You didn't even notice the rearrangement of furniture as you plopped down on the couch and asked for some water.  I gave you your water and wondered when you would notice you were less than two feet away from a huge pile of presents.  Your mother came down and was also confused why there was no commotion yet.  You were half in and half out when you asked for a graham cracker, still not noticing anything special like the two play kitchen sets that were roughly three foot high next to you.  On a side note the play sets have made it through probably around twenty years and now at least three of our families' households.  Your mother and I sat there in the darkness awkwardly wondering if you would fall back asleep before noticing that Santa had already fully stocked our house.  It took roughly one hour and it was roughly 4:30 before you were out enough to bring you back to your upstairs bed.

We had to wake you up in the morning, but this time the presents and kitchen set definitely caught your attention.  Our time table had been off a bit and your mother was a bit worried about being late for our visits to the other households for the day.  After a quick refocus on what is truly important about this day, we sat there and watched you open your gifts.  You made out like a bandit and perhaps were a bit spoiled with your spoils.  When tasked with picking just one gift to bring to your Bwama's house, you calmly piled up on one your kitchen sets with every piece of fake food and dish you own and informed us that this is the gift you decided to bring, so you could make breakfast for everyone.  After some negotiating that would have impressed a vendor in a Turkish flea market, we got you to agree to taking just the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine.

Three households later, and at least 50 miles travel under our belt, and tons of gifts later, and lots of hugs and holiday wishes from many family members, and tradition after tradition both old and new, you finally hit sensory overload.  Christmas holidays can be rough on even the most seasoned veteran.  You finally convinced your parents to get you home to enjoy some quality cuddle time ,before the reality of work or cleaning or just day-to-day life come screaming back in tomorrow morning.

Your mother has this picture of Christmas morning and even all of Christmas Day securely ingrained in her head.  She has this perfect picture and she strives to pass on this gift.  But I will tell you a little secret.  Though she has this perfect picture in her head, that is only because time has blurred all the stresses that happened to achieve those small perfect moments.  With the difficult erased by Father Time, only the magic remains.  When everything seems to be going wrong, you're late for this place or that, your pie isn't cooking, you forget a gift, and you are just sure that Christmas itself is ruined...simply take a big deep breath and remember the true meaning of this time of year.  It surprisingly turns out that often the imperfect moments are really the magic.  They certainly usually are the most memorable.  When you are all grown up and with kids of your own,  you can thank your mother for that memory of the perfect Christmas magic moment.  And if you ever need some reality thrown into that perfect memory, you can come ask me and I will tell you about 3:30 in the morning wake ups and parents that had to drink no less than ten cups of coffee to make it through the day.

To all our family members that make Christmas so special for our family, thank you and Merry Christmas!

Sincerely with love from you dad,
Leo