Category : family
I have wondered about you for 20 years. I have hoped that I would do right by you, and feared that I would not be able to help but fail you. I have wondered who you would be. I have wondered if you would be like me. I have feared that you will receive all the attention, and the next will feel forgotten.
You are the greatest gift, though you barely exist. You have existed in my heart for years. I have written to you and for you in my journals these past ten years. I have thought much about the life I will prepare for you.
I will not turn you into a task. You will not be my list of do’s and dont’s. You are mine. You come from me. I will honor your life with my fullest attention.
I will not make you an idol. I will live a balanced life, and show you how to do the same. You shall have everything that is mine. Nothing will be withheld from you.
I wait to meet you face to face with great anticipation. Your arrival will mark a miraculous moment in my life. You will teach me what I have forgotten: to see the world with eyes of wonder, fear, astonishment, and joy. You will draw from me latent wisdom and understanding.
I have not met you, but you are no stranger. Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. You are a part of me. I am a part of you. When you suffer, I suffer. When you rejoice, I rejoice. Your suffering cannot go unnoticed by me. Your hopes and dreams are more precious than a lifetime of fame. Your success is my success.
You will live with possibilities I never knew. I will encourage your creativity, your curiosity, and your passion. You have my blessing to be exactly who God made you to be. And I will be every bit the father you need to make the journey. And should I fail, your heavenly Father will cover you and protect you with his love.
It is not long now. Soon, we will meet, face to face. Enjoy the journey, my beloved.
– Pappa
It’s official! My family is moving back to North Texas. There’s nothing like the DFW area. It marks the soul. The only thing greater would be to be rich and travel to exotic places and relax on tropical beaches. I say that now, but summer’s coming and I’ll be ready to go arctic.
We can’t wait to have my family back in the area. We’re hoping to have monthly, if not weekly, Shabbat dinners in our home with family and let our parents help us out with babysitting when the first kid comes along.
Please keep my family in your prayers. They are still looking for work.
Have a great one!
Posted in family on 17. Jan, 2007
Posted in family on 25. Dec, 2006
It’s Christmas Day, and we’ve already celebrated with one set of family. Heather, my mother-in-law, and I visited my family for an early Christmas celebration. We had a wonderful time in the Oklahoma City area. There is something so different about OKC and Edmond. The air is so calm and peaceful in comparison to Dallas / Fort Worth. The entire region’s atmosphere is simply more calm. It’s like going to the DFW suburbs and vacuuming the frenzy right out of everyone’s lives. I sometimes wonder if the people in Edmond even have real problems.
I am destined to smell good this year. Common gifts I received from family members this years were colognes and Barnes & Noble gift cards. Apparently I need to both groom and educate myself better.
We enjoyed some good eats while we were there. The main holiday dish this year was beef brisket, and it was good! We also hit up a sandwich shop called McAllisters (not sure about spelling) near UCO that makes a killer reuben sandwich. Last night we tried The Cheesecake Factory for the first time. Wow. It was awesome. I’m not a huge cheesecake fan, but the Tiramisu was slammin’.
Perhaps the best parts of the time we spent with the family were the personal and homemade gifts a few people gave. My wife made an excellent gift for my grandparents. Needless to say, I don’t think a single female in the house made it through the gift giving process without shedding at least a few tears. It was one of our best Christmases ever.
We’re getting ready right now to go visit Heather’s sister. I am beginning to love the holidays more and more.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. That is what they say, right? Yesterday, the Christmas cards started piling in. It’s a shame, really, that we all don’t find excuses to communicate more often. Still, it’s heartwarming to receive them, and probably more so because of the Christmas season.
A few couples including my grandparents (Howard and Judy Dessinger), David and Caroline Shorter, and Russ and Christy Hemati have gone a step further by writing a Christmas letter. I love the Christmas letter. A year-end summary tells me what I’ve missed, and reminds me why even great distances cannot keep me from caring.
In light of the heartwarming effect Christmas letters have on me, I am inspired to write my own. Most of our friends and family don’t spend much time on the Internet, much less reading blogs like this. In order to keep in touch with most of the people we love, emails and/or conventional letters are still more successful.
So this year, we will send out our first family Christmas letter. It’s exciting to begin traditions, especially if you can recognize them as such from the beginning. It is a husband’s privilege to feel he has contributed to the formation of traditions within his family.
I am grateful, and pleased to know that many years from now, we will have a tradition in place which will be treasured for years to come by friends, family, and our children.
We made it to my parents’ house. It’s great to see family. I’m pausing to write a brief post here because I needed to get away from the discussion of declining ethics and morals among Americans. Yes, I agree that such decline exists. But no, I have no desire to wax on and on about it because there’s nothing I can really do about it.
We’ve experienced a couple mini crises over the past 24 hours. My wife lost her wedding ring last night, which is simply heartbreaking for her. I even took apart the sink pipes to check, but no luck so far. Heather’s mom is praying that the ring will appear somewhere soon. I don’t have the faith to really pray for that, but I’ll take it if it comes. I got the crap beat out of me on the basketball court last night. My foot hit a major wet spot on the floor and slid out from under me while the rest of me decided to fall in a crumpled heap, resulting in the first splits I’ve performed in my entire life. I’m suddenly very grateful for the butterfly stretches I started doing a week ago. Doing the splits still hurt like hell, but I might have been temporarily disabled if not for the stretches.
We’re waiting for my sister to arrive from Tulsa. She spent the day with our grandparents. They’re awesome people. I miss them. It’s unfortunate that they couldn’t make it this year. Reason number one for convincing the family to move to DFW. Once my sis arrives, we’ll dig into some tasty grub. Right now, the women are talking health and kittens. I’m going into the living room to catch the Cowboys with my dad. Happy Holidays, everyone! I have much to be thankful for.
It’s November 12th, 2006. Thanksgiving Day is right around the corner, and Christmas is right on its heels. It is the happiest time of year and the time of greatest suffering. Holidays are like Jedi Knights: they are intensely powerful, whether for the good or the dark side. Indifference implies callousness. Unless, of course, you come from a third-world country with no familial holidays. I love this time of year. I have never been the guy most geared toward family. I rejected family as a teenager (go figure) and refused to identify myself with “those people.” A successful holiday used to mean a bottle of liquor, a mixed cd, and a trip to the movie theater… alone. I still wonder what the holiday means to my family as we get together. Do they care if the conversation is just idle nonsense, or do they really have things they want to know and say? If so, why do they never bridge the gap between us and share their feelings? I guess I live in a very private family on some levels. We get along, and we are very kind to each other (I was the last one to participate there), yet we know very little about each other on so many levels. Despite the unknowns, holidays are still a chance to appreciate those you love, despit the fact that you may not be able to explain why you love them or what you get out of it. Even with so many unanswered questions about the mysteries of familial bonds, it’s nice to know you can always come home to people who know who you were before you got hurt and started faking it. It’s nice to be accepted. I realize that this does not speak to everyone, and many would rebuke me for generalizing everyone into a quasi-successful family role. I know that there are far too many out there who don’t have anyone to turn to. I know that there are many who would rather die than come home. I know that there are some who can’t remember if home even exists. If you fit into one of those categories, I do not apologize for my generalizations. I do appreciate your patience with me as I express different memories, for I can only communicate what is my own. I hope and pray each one of you finds a new family rising out of the ashes which are your memories. I pray that God will surround you with people who possess the god-given capacity to know you, love you, and appreciate you, so that you will live a life worth living. I pray that you will each know what it means to sit around a table with those you love and share moments of joy and satisfaction. Happy Holidays.
