(When we both were much younger.)This, the 7th day of the 7th month, will always be a special date to me, the day my first son was born, way back in the dark ages when Reagan was President. Peter was a scrappy little character from the beginning. Once, with a driving rain drenching us while he was still a baby, he slipped right out of his car seat in the backseat of my 1966 Volvo, where it was parked downtown, and slid straight out of the car into the gutter, where he sank, briefly, under water.
I of course grabbed him and held him aloft, fearful that I'd just committed one of the cardinal sins of parenting, i.e., exposing your child to unnecessary danger.
Not to worry. My little boy was laughing!
Later, we shared those magic years when a son discovers some of the same passions his Dad had, decades earlier -- sports, collecting, BB guns, books, cars, and imaginary games.
I re-experienced all of those with him, from working on his baseball skills (he was a truly talented hitter and fielder); to collections (he helped me organize our baseball cards, old coins, and stamp collections); to our BB guns (we assembled an arsenol); to books; to cars (I taught him to drive a stick shift by age 9); to imaginary worlds only the two of us could ever understand, let alone communicate to others.
Happy Birthday, Peter! You've always been your father's hero, no less so now than ever before. I love you and am so proud to be able to say I am your Dad.
(Peter is working at Wood's Hole on Cape Cod this week as part of his summer work in the midst of gaining a PhD at Cal Tech in neuroscience.)
-30-
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lol
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