Today I am theparent of a twelve year-old seventh grader. (OK, The Random Spouse is too.) I’d like to say I was spending the day doing something fun, like taking Yak the Younger to the movies or to ride roller coasters at Six Flags, but the truth is I’m sitting in my office working.

Don’t feel too badly for the child.

He just called from The Random Mother’s car, which is halfway to Disneyland as we speak, to tell me he’s spending the day at Disneyland and the night at the Disneyland Hotel, with another day of Disneyland tomorrow. Apparently the Random In-laws will be meeting the Random Parents to hand off the child somewhere on Main Street U.S.A., at which point Yak the Younger will spend a second day at Disneyland with his other grandparents, followed by a week playing World of Warcraft with The Random Father-in-Law … and then another week in Texasat The Random Parents’ lake house. (Life’s rough.)

In other words … when I was a child, birthday meant a cake and a special dinner (I wasn’t much on parties, though I had a few of those too).My songets a three week vacation andtwo days atDisneyland.

I think someone is telling me something.

Joking aside, I’m glad he’s having this time with his grandparents. The summer I turned ten, I spent several weeks in Texas with my own grandparents (who, as it happens, also had a lake house). I’d never spent so much time away from home, and I loved every minute (or at least, every one I remember). I fished in the lake, went water skiing behind my grandfather’s boat and learned to shoot a rifle (to the Random Grandfather’s delight and the Random Mother’s dismay). I woke up early and went to bed late. I helped my grandmother paint her lawn chairs “rooster red” (or “turkey red,” if you asked my grandpa) and watched my grandfatherin his workshop. I fed ducks. I played with the dog next door and with her puppies – and I wrote adozen pleading letters and made a thousand begging phone calls home asking if I could bring a puppy home to California for my very own. (When The Random Parents finally relented, the puppies had all found homes. I did get a dog that summer, though that’s another blog.)

In short, I grew up a little and got to know my grandparents a lot. My best and clearest memories of them come primarily from that summer at the lake, and although I didn’t understand at the time the trip had lasting value far beyond the long walks to the candy counter at the country store and the lazy hours swimming and fishing in the shade of the boat house.

My birthday wish for Yak the Younger? That he spend this year growing closer to God and learning to understand the man he is not-so-slowly becoming. That he spend this summer swimming, reading and generally having fun. That he spend the next two weeks getting to knowboth sets of grandparents even better than before, so that he, too, may look back almost thirty years down the line and remember today, tomorrow and this summer as a time of peace, a time of learning his place in the family tree, and a time of putting down roots that will anchor him to the generations above, that he might eventually extend to the generations to come.

Best returns, Yak the Younger. May your birthday, your summer, your year and the years to come be blessed, and may the lines fall to you in places as pleasant as they have fallen for me.

Trackposted to Webloggin, third world county, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, and The Pet Haven Blog, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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