A hug...

What are the memories that you hold precious in your life? Which moments of your past seem to feed the emotional needs that are constantly begging to be nourished? We all have special moments that we like to remember in order to get that sweet emotional fix that makes us smile all over inside and out. Finding someone in your life that is able to constantly fulfill all of your emotional hunger is most likely an unrealistic quest. In life, we are fortunate when the sum of those that are close to us are able to somehow satisfy what our hearts desire. Most of the time instead, we all live in a continuous search for a level of emotional satisfaction that is hardly achievable. At some point though, I have already seen it in many of my elders, a new kind of satisfaction arises to quench our otherwise greedy and never satisfied emotional self. Is it that we eventually come to realize that maybe everything that we need to be happy is truly contained within us? Or could it be that at some point in our lives the moments that we have lived are in all more powerful in our minds than they actually were during their physical manifestation in the past? I truly believe that at some moment in our lives, in order to find true happiness, we are forced mentally relive the good part of every single moment experienced while neglecting the not so good part of them in the process. For example, I am bias towards memories of when my kids where very young and full of innocence. The way they would wrap their arms around my neck when I held them in my arms invoke such powerful emotional connections that they carry me through very difficult times regardless of the reality of which I can also remember how painful it was to do so for long periods of time. It hurt almost every part of my then younger body to have to hold my kids in my arms for extensive periods of time, yet there was very little choice in the matter when they were crying or tired of walking. However, now the memory of those moments has nothing to do with any pain, instead they are all about the good feel of tiny little hands, cheeks, and bodies snuggled up against me.

I have come full circle with the little things in my life. I have chosen to ignore the parts that annoyed or bothered me, and enjoy the simpler memories and emotions involved with my daily interaction with my kids. It is not as if I have a never ending source of feel good moments on a daily basis, so why should I focus on the ones that are not so great instead of the few that are truly amazing? Read along the next few paragraphs and see if you are able to find where it is that I am nourished emotionally on just a few hours of interaction with my now teenage sons. I bet if you pay attention to the words you too will be able to appreciate the little things in my own life too...

I am still trying to figure out what motivated my oldest teenage son to take the time to clean out the chaotic conditions in his bedroom. I have previously shared with you how on occasions I've gone on a mission of trying to clear out some of the catastrophic fallout that occurs when my oldest son decides to let it all go completely out of control and ignore the simple laws of order leaving anything and everything that is inside of his room just pile up in what ultimately seems as layers of the remains left by a devastating tornado. It can actually take hours to make any sense of what is to stay and what needs to be thrown out in order to bring the room back into a livable habitat. Interestingly, in the past he has had these moments of lucidity that turn him into a lean, mean, cleaning machine, but typically the effort is short lived and even though the affected perimeter of his impulse to be organized includes his crash pad, seldom does it ever extend anywhere past his bedroom door. This time however, he included in his amazing moment of order the contents of the family room, which until recently had doubled also as his secondary living space. The fact that he actually has done all of this cleaning is not what surprises me the most. What has me dumbfounded is that I cannot for the life of me figure out the trigger. Please, do not get me wrong, I am pleased and tickled pink that such a dramatic moment has occurred during the weekend. I intend to praise this effort and utilize this opportunity as a springboard to motivate him in other ways too, so no good deed will go unrewarded, for sure!

In fact, one of the gadgets that surfaced from this event was a small digital camera that I had given him for Christmas which had been taken out of the box but never used afterwards. I thought that since he likes photography so much, getting him his own camera would be a way of encouraging him to go back to do something safe and fun. The camera survived, however the charger never made the count out of the lost and found box of goodies rediscovered in his room. Fortunately for all of us I had made the same gift to his younger brother who was accommodating enough to share his camera battery charger with his older brother for a bit. This sharing is a dangerous door to walk through since if and when conditions return back to a state of chaotic disorder in the older brother's room, the chances of being able to recover to loaned article are probably as good as winning the California Lottery.

I have learned that very few things in life happen as planned. As my son got ready to head out the door to do a bit of Ansel Adam'ing, somehow the never used camera fell out of his hands and hit the floor with enough force to dislodge and damage the opening and closing mechanism for the lens. In frustration he cam to his geeky dad hoping that I could pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat routine and fix it for him, but instead, after fiddling with the thing for a while I just made it worse instead. We both tried to salvage the cool grown up toy but even though the carcass still seemed beautiful from afar, its true soul and life had long since decided to go to wherever it is that broken camera souls go to when they hit the deck hard enough. Amazingly, my son did not make any big deal out of it. I suggested that if he had any money to contribute I would pay for the other half and I would buy a new camera for him, but apparently this was not a wise way to spend any loot he might of accumulated in the last few weeks from allowances and what not, and the subject was dropped.

"Dad, would you mind washing some of these dirty clothes?," the foreign request came out of the lips of the suddenly clean conscious child. "Sure, just drop them in front of my door and I'll take care of it..." I replied with a sense of wonder. Until now, even though he had made this request a few times before, it was always limited to one or two items of clothing that he intended to use in the next hour or so. This time instead, a pile to fill at least one whole load in the washing machine was instantly delivered to my room. A few hours later as I was about to walk out the door with my youngest son to take him to check out some prices on a gaming system for which he had been saving his pennies to buy on his own, I let my oldest son know that his clothes would be dry in less than 15 minutes in case he wanted to take them back to his room from the dryer. Amazingly, not only did I discover that he had taken his clothes back to his room, but he also separated a few other shirts and some pants that I had included in the load that belonged to his brother instead. There they were, in the same place we had agreed to make the original exchange of dirty items to wash, not neatly folded, but at least stretched out.

As I went about fulfilling the promise to my younger son of helping him get his video game system I was rewarded with a surprise $50 gift certificate from the electronics’ store which I happily applied towards the purchase of another digital camera for my oldest son. It was almost as if the money flew out of the sky and into my hands. Of course the camera cost more than $50 dollars, but this was probably as much as I would of been able to convince the teenager to give up on his own anyways. A few hours later and the younger lad and I were on our way home we got a call from the older one asking if I would mind picking him up a few blocks away from our home so that he did not have to walk all the way. As we arrived we found him sitting in a bench playing and singing songs to the hollow halls of his previous middle school alma mater. On our final mile and almost home I passed over the plastic bag that contained the new camera I had just bought for him and he simply said "Oh cool!" To which I instinctively replied, "please take care of it." We got home and exited the car from inside the garage. A promised smoothie was on my list of things still to do for the younger guy, and the older one requested if I would not mind warming up a deli sandwich I had bought him earlier during the day before he was really hungry. I was walking out of the kitchen after cleaning my own mess and completing all the previous short order requests when my oldest son walked over to me, stretched out his arms wide open, and in a totally unexpected gesture gave me a very nice hug! Wow, what an amazing feeling it is to get something so beautiful in return without having to request it! Mind you, it was not the biggest hug I have gotten, it was not even the warmest hug I have received this week, but all and all it was a very nice hug indeed.

Dad