no no noway noway
I've neglected blogging here for seven months and I'm not even sure why. Every time I tried to sit down to write, the posts felt incomplete or shallow.
But my lack of blogging has also meant that I've not written anything about the amazing girl that has sprung forth from infant-hood. I really regret not seizing verbal snapshots and snippets of Lily's second year and putting them here in this blog for as much me to remember, as others to read.
Lily has certainly not lost her independent streak. No, far from waning, it's redoubled as she approaches two. The subject line is, or at least was until very recently, her very, very favorite thing to say.
NO NO NOWAY NOWAY
But she's oh so daring on her own. Fearless in the face of most things (except for the time I accidentally scared her and she went running from the room) and smart as a whip. She recognized (uppercase, of course), and could say, every letter in the alphabet by 19 months and numbers one through ten followed shortly thereafter. Lately she's been doing a little sing-song-y counting from one to fifteen.
Earlier in 2011 I was, as is typical of me, a little worried about her lack of interest in books. It was such a contrast from Nate at the same age. But that has completely changed and she is a voracious consumer of books. Every time we hang out in the front room she brings me book after book to read.
But in some ways, the past 10 months have not been a lot different than the first 12. She still goes to bed soon after I arrive home from work and as a result, I still get to see and interact with her, at most, an hour a day during the work week. And during that time I'm also trying to eat dinner, interact with Nate and Heather. There is no point in trying to keep her awake later, because she is clearly done for the day and that would be selfish of me. When she doesn't nap, she's in bed 30 minutes after I arrive home. And with work being the way it has been, there have been times when I have not seen her for more than 48 hours, despite living in the same house.
This is the real reason for my regret in not blogging: I know I have forgotten hosts of small special moments of the time I do have with her. My brain just will not retain them (and I do try to store, I really do). And while my New Years Resolution to blog more has not gotten off to a good start, I hope this is the first step to meeting it and thereby helping my own brain remember the times I do have with her.
Summer
There is a specific type of sadness in the cricket's call. It sounds, to me, more like a lament than a mating call.
The nights are growing longer and cooler and Summer is ending.
losing traditions before they are formed
One of the things about fatherhood that I really enjoy (and look forward to) is creating traditions. Not huge "we take a family trip" or "everyone comes over for Christmas" type traditions, but little ones.
Though it wasn't a tradition for Heather growing up in Crystal Lake, I always sorta though going to a local restaurant called "Little John's" could be mine and Nate's. An "out with dad on a Saturday" type tradition. It has been open for 29 years serving gyros, italian beef, hot dogs, burgers, etc. While not the easiest place to get in and out of, it was always worth visiting.
Sadly, I found out only this evening that the business is closing its doors at the end of the day tomorrow.
http://www.nwherald.com/articles/2009/09/18/r_kn1xtxtcsucwsn5efe_4wg/index.xml
Thankfully, the owner is not being forced out and is not closing because of the economy. He's closing on his terms and frankly, after 29 years, any small business owner deserves his or her retirement.
But in thinking about its closure, I realized something: a number of the local businesses that I enjoy frequenting are owned by people who will probably be retiring in the next few years. There are so few new local businesses opening (or finding it possible to stay open) that it's very difficult to get any sort of tradition going in the first place. Little John's, for example, is going to be knocked down and a Walgreen's put in its place.
**sigh**
I'm certainly going to miss Little John's, but I'll miss its potential even more.
reflection
(I've had this entry sitting in my drafts folder since June. I don't know how to finish it, so I'm posting it as is.)
On his 31st birthday, nearly a year after starting out on the great exploration of the Louisiana Purchase with William Clark, Meriwether Lewis wrote the following entry in his journal:
August 18, 1805
Meriwether LewisI soon obtained three very good horses. for which I gave an uniform coat, a pair of legings, a few handkerchiefs, three knives and some other small articles the whole of which did not cost more than about 20$ in the U' States. the Indians seemed quite as well pleased with their bargin as I was. the men also purchased one for an old checked shirt a pair of old legings and a knife.
This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little, indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.
reference (emphasis mine)
Here I am, 3 years past that point wondering the same thing. Except, of course, I've done nothing as awe-inspiring as explore and rigorously document the Louisiana Purchase. I don't know. In two more years I will reach the half-way point in my life (God willing). What have I done? What can I do? There were times when it felt like the answer was: most anything, but for a long time it's felt like: nearly nothing.