Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Thanksgiving '22 Travelog #4
Woodbridge, VA - Sun, 20 Nov 2022, 10:30pm

Sometimes when I think about how old I am and how I feel, I put it in perspective by thinking how old I was when my father was this age. My dad was 35 years older than me. That's more of an age gap than many kids have with their parents. When I was 5, he was already 40. When I was 15, he was 50. One thing it meant was that my dad rarely engaged in any activities with me that had a physical dimension. Sit down in front of the TV and talk? Sure. But help me practice baseball skills when I was 9 and playing on a Little League team? It was always, "I'm too tired, ask your [younger] sister to play catch with you."

I was reminded of some of the things I missed out on when I spent the day visiting with my sister C. She and my brother in law started their family at 22. They'd both just graduated from college, and BIL was still in law school. That was a poor choice financially but a good choice in other respects. They've always had more energy to spend with their kids than my parents did.

Today BIL bounced from activity to activity with his kids. For example, two needed to lash some poles into a structure for a merit badge in Boy Scouts. BIL helped them lay out the necessary poles, found the right kind of rope, then guided them after they tied knots. My dad never would have left the easy chair in front of the football game on TV. Not that he knew how to lash anything more complicated than shoelaces anyway. BIl did other things with his kids throughout the day, including agreeing to play Trivial Pursuit with one at 9pm. 9pm? My dad would've been asleep in his recliner chair (with the TV still on) by then.