2008 a reflection and 2009 a new approach:

So we just returned from the annual NYE event in Maine.  Our friends could not make it so it was just the boys and the dogs and I. We drove up early in the morning to avoid the impending storm and to get there before it arrived there, it never did.  Admittedly, I love the minivan, loading dogs and kids power sliding doors and a key fob that does everything…..Ok, I have officially over the anxiety about it but is needs and HRC sticker on it and something else not sure.  Perhaps a bumper sticker “Intentional Father-Don’t give up the dream-ADOPT, who knows.We had a nice time and it was good to hang out with just the boys. 

We were having dinner and I posed the question to the kids “what was the best thing about 2008”  (for me there was not much), I wanted to see how well they fared as both are very articulate now.  It was amazing to me that the answers I got from them were that they were not happy about the “BOO, BOO in the house” but that we spent lots of time together.  They focused on the happy things and did not notice anything else.  I sat there in amazement and slowly all the bad things that were in my mind melted away and I realized that as a parent I had done my thing and they were OK, and that even all the shit that happened they were fine.  I cried a bit as there is always a creeping doubt if you did the right thing; this said to me that we were ok.

We ask each other three questions every night, they are:

What was your favorite part of the day?
What is your wish for tomorrow?
What is your dream for tonight?

However, I decided to ask an additional question this New Years Eve.  I asked the kids what they thought 2009 should be about.  What did we want to do….I gave examples like, Adventures, Service to others, things like that.  The kids went to bed and I stayed up and watched the Sex in the City movie as I had wanted to see it all year so I thought it would be fitting to end the year with that.  Guess what I took away was to keep it simple and about you and your partner. 

Interestingly, I received a comment from someone who viewed the profile here and said it was like a “sales pitch”.  To some, perhaps, he commented additionally, that I appeared to want a “Male Accessory”, (I left the comment I wanted to make alone).  He commented that it appeared I wanted someone to “Fit” into my life, which I had constructed.  I also had the new accessory "The Key Fob".  However, I gave it due consideration,  and to some extent he is correct.  I do need someone who “Fits” into this life of kids and what I chose to be, someone who wants to be a father and a member of a family and all that comes with it.  Someone who is not so self absorbed that they can put the needs of another before then and handle the roller coaster that parenting and being a family can be.  Now, couple that with my take away from the movie and there is the combination I am searching for.  Someone who can keep it about “US” and help me to do that and someone who would be comfortable in second place to the children…however, I am in second place as well, so we are first to one another and second to the kids.

On the way home I asked the kids about what they though 2009 should be about and Ben answered. It should be about the “peace of love”. He explained that we should tell people we love them and kiss them and that love is peaceful. So, here is to 2009 and our journey toward “peace of love”. To you and yours I wish you the same and only hope your desires, wishes and dreams come to fruition and that hope pervades in everything you do.