A Memory
I think I've mentioned this before, but Eli 20.4 and I have an origin story.It was back in the 3.7 days, and Gloria had gone to Shreveport because her grandmother was in the hospital. We stayed in Austin because it was going to be stressful for him to be in a situation that was so emotionally difficult for everyone.
I thought I'd written a long, warm blog post at the time describing the moment that changed my life (and, Eli said, his as well).
So I looked for it today, and after an embarrassing amount of effort, I found this:
I knew Eli was missing his mom, so I tried to jam yesterday with plenty of activities, including a trip to a beautiful neighborhood park that is his favorite. The entire park trip consisted of him setting up his Rescue Heroes action figures (Billy Blaze and Jack Hammer, 8" high) at the bottom of a very tall slide (over ten feet). Then he would climb the stairs to the top of the slide, and on his way down, he would yell "INCOMING!" and hit one action figure with each foot. It was the Eli 3.7 community theater interpretation of a scene from the Rescue Heroes movie, and he did it about twenty times in a row. He enjoyed it so much that I laughed every time.
When we started to leave the park, I noticed that everything around us was green. It was a beautiful spring day, with just a hint of coolness in the air, and the sun was sinking near the horizon. Eli 3.7 took my hand and said "Thank you, Daddy. It's been a great day."
I think that might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
That was it, just a small part of a longer blog post. And we both remember him saying "Dad, it was a perfect day," which is clearly not what he actually said. But we both remember the moment when he took my hand, and from that point on, we were inseparable.
Still are.
I feel lucky about that every day.
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