ramblings of the mc

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I sit at the kitchen table. I don’t do that often. Maybe only when I know that something is different than it was the last time I did it…

As I laid down next to my wife tonight, I touched her hand while she slept. She didn’t know, but I touched it for a long time. And in her gentle hand I came face to face with the single, greatest regret of my life: I have never written about my family. In fact, I haven’t written anything for 5 years. My heart for that period of time will forever be forgotten…

Keller is 8 months old, almost 9. He’s bigger everyday. Some days I am able to actually see him learning. He smiles more than any baby you’ve ever seen. It’s in those smiles and those expressions on his face where I really see him growing. Sure, his feet get bigger; my mom bought him some new shoes today. But it’s through his eyes that I see his heart grow. He learns to trust me and Lindsey. And he will learn from us how to trust others. And, eventually, he will learn from us how to trust God. He stands. He holds on to the love seat and he stands. It breaks something deep inside of me to think of the day when he no longer needs me to hold his hands as he clumsily moves his legs in an attempt to walk. This boy is loved. I hesitate to say that no other child has ever been more loved; I’m sure that most every parent feels this way about their children. But I can’t help but feel that Keller is receiving far more than just our hearts. You should see the way his mother holds him. He knows. Even now, before he can speak, he knows.

All this writing and reading (lately it’s been Stephen King’s “The Green Mile”) awakens a part of me that I miss. Or maybe it doesn’t so much awaken a part of me as it awakens me. I can’t turn loose of the dread that my best days are behind me. I’m 25 years old. I should be alive and vibrant and running. It seems that all my days, right up to the close of this one, are very far from this moment. I regret that I have never written that before now. It’s exactly the feeling that describes the man that I have become: obsessed with what I’ve been and alarmingly removed from what I will be tomorrow. I would like to tell you that tomorrow will see the birth of a new man, a new spirit, but I fear that to be quite presumptuous. I can assure you, however, that if you so choose, you will read all about my affairs and my misplaced heart, as I plan to drain this pen and many more with my scattered and transparent thoughts. I hope my thoughts are just that: see-through. While it horrifies me completely to think that someone may one day read this, it also frees me to know that my most secret heart refuses to be bound up within itself.

I will kiss my young, beautiful wife. I will hold my son so close that we will feel our souls touch, and in that moment realize that something bigger than us and greater than us has been awakened. I intend to be tomorrow what I have always intended to be: brandon. What such being involves, I’m not totally sure. I’ll keep you posted on my discoveries. I guess I’m about 13 days late in making resolutions, but then again self is not renewed just because the calendar is.

I’m going to lay down now. And I’m going to touch Lindsey. She’s asleep. She won’t know. But the touch of her skin will inevitably set off a million lines of poetry and a million good intentions and a million things that I should have written just now but was too self absorbed to think about.

See you tomorrow.