Old people tell young people all the time that life is short and passes fast and young people don't believe it. It's been that way since the earth started turning.
My son, Sean, turned 30 today and while it seems like it was only yesterday, more reflection reveals how much has been packed into those 30 years.
When he was a baby, Sean wasn't really into being held and rocked. As a toddler, when you picked him up to hold, he'd go limp so he'd slither back down. Sean was always in a hurry to be on his own.
Of my 62 years, I've spent almost half of them now thinking about Sean, off somewhere being on his own, and worrying about him and his brother. As I've written before, the Collinses come from a long line of worriers. It's what we do, even though it accomplishes nothing.
But your children are capable of constant surprises.
Like this one that occurred at Oshkosh this year (the picture above was taken at Oshkosh).
The night Sean and I flew over for the second half of AirVenture (his brother, Patrick, and I had flown over for the first half), we walked over to a restaurant on the other side of the airport, for which there was along line. We were invited to cool our heels at the karaoke bar outside; and so we did.
Sean, who I think is the type not to put himself "out there"(like his father, to a degree), grabbed the list of songs and searched for a proper victim.
I told him I was surprised he'd get up in front of people and sing. But he said he had a friend who took him to a karaoke bar not long ago and got up to sing. And he said if she could do it, then he could too.
And so he did, and while the Doors' People are Strange might not have been exactly pitch perfect, it was perfect, nonetheless.
And that's the way our children are. Like the rest of us, they are not perfect. And yet they are.