I Feel Old

As the title suggests, I'm feeling old tonight. Oh, not because I'm feeling sickly or run down or my hair is turning particularly grey or falling out (which it is). No, I'm feeling old because of my son.

Tonight, before he went to bed, he decided to point out to me that as of tomorrow, I am now the father of two children who are legally adults in all 50 states, and one who is nearly at that point.

As close as I came to smacking him across the room as he snickered at my attempts to ignore him, I had to admit that he was right. But what does it mean? Isn't age just a number? Of course it is. They say you're only as young as you feel. Right now, I feel old.

As I look back over the years, I realize just how quickly they have flown. It seems only yesterday that this now-adult son of mine was playing pick-up-sticks at his grandmother's dining room table and getting upset because he lost, whining in French because he couldn't speak English. It wasn't so long ago that I married his mother and he looked up at me and immediately started calling me "papa", accepting me as a father rather than a step father.

I think of my other son and can see him sitting on the floor watching cartoons while I tried to catch a quick nap after a 12 hour shift at work. I see myself reading him stories from his Sesame Street books while doing the voices for him and making him laugh.

Now I see two young men, taking their own places in the world. My hair is now salt and pepper, except on the top where it is deserting me quickly (the cowards). My knees are a bit creakier as I climb the stairs. There are lines forming where they were expected, and hair growing where it wasn't. And I ask myself, "How much did I miss? How much of their growing up did I miss because I was lazy or I wasn't prepared for how fast time would go?" I'm sure that I missed far too much, and I know that I would do a lot of it differently if I had to do it all again.

I'm not ready to be a grandfather, nor am I desirous to be one. Oh, it isn't because I don't like children. But I look at the world today, and I think back to how difficult it was to raise children when things were even a bit easier than they are now, and I realize just how tough it will be on the next generation.

I always believed that when considering the future, expect the end of this system of things tomorrow, but prepare in case it isn't. I really hope that paradise is soon and that God allows me to be a part of it. But I know that this system is in bad shape, and raising kids in it is a gargantuan task.

Still, I think back and wish that I would have had the opportunity to raise kids in perfect surroundings, with me being a perfect parent. And I know - it didn't happen that way. I can only hope that as my kids think back on their childhood, they feel that I didn't do such a bad job after all ... for an old man.