Hold Your Breath
One of the scariest things that I have felt as a father is the semi-sudden awareness that my children will leave the nest. They will go from infant to toddler, child to tween, and then from teenager into adulthood, and in my eyes it will have happened so quickly that I could’ve held my breath and watched it happen before I was forced to exhale. There will be points in their lives where you see phantom glimmers of their adulthood peeking out at you and winking, hinting at their futures. These glimmers will become more prominent and then morph into behavior patterns, which will then shape how your child takes his or her own niche in the world. And it will at times remind you of yourself and how you went through transitions in your own childhood. But you will one day realize that your own parents saw those glimmers in you, and your perspective will flip from that of a son, to a father, and then to a father’s son. My oldest son Joshua, who just turned 15 recently, took charge of ...