Next Practices

Once your children leave the nest, there are no guarantees how often you will get to spend time with them.  Will they move far away?  Will they be so busy with their own lives even if they live nearby that you won’t be able to spend much time with them anyway?

The past week has been a good one for me in this regard.  I live in Louisville, Kentucky.  My youngest son works at the same company as me, goes to the same church, lives five miles away, and we get to babysit his daughter every Tuesday.  So I have the joy of seeing him regularly.

My oldest son lives and works on Folly Beach near Charleston, South Carolina. He is the revenue manager for the only true beachfront hotel near Charleston.  Until this past Sunday, I hadn’t seen him in 14 months.  The last few days, therefore, I changed my schedule some to make sure I could spend more time with him (including not worrying about my daily blogging – I’ll catch up).

The photo shown here is one of us taking a zip line tour of Louisville MegaCavern earlier this week. We ate out together at a couple of places – one he had never eaten at before and one he traditionally returns to with friends when he comes to town.  We spent time with family – his grandparents, brother, sister-in-law, niece, mother – and he got to hang out with friends he hasn’t seen in a long while.  It was even fun watching my dog whom he has only met once adopt my son for these few days like he was her best friend.

To top off the week my youngest son came to my desk at work today just to take a break, drink our favorite drink, and chill for a while.  It just doesn’t get much better than that.

There are many things I wish I had done more of with my boys as they grew, but I can’t change the past.  I can, however, make the right decisions in the present and future.  One of those is leap year lesson #132 –Time with your children is time well spent.