The older I get the more it seems time flies by and my children are growing up too fast. My oldest child always did seem to be much older than his actual age. When he was around 10 years old his pet parakeet was acting weird so he picked the bird up in his hands. The bird – a white parakeet, who he had named “Rainbow” because he loved it “more than all the colors of the rainbow” – proceeded to die right in the palm of his little hand.
My son was traumatized and was crying uncontrollably. No matter what my wife and I tried to do or say there was nothing that would console him. Later, when he had appeared to calm down we found out that he was feeling guilty because had had forgotten to feed and water the bird for about a week (at that point my wife and I were also feeling guilty for not reminding our son to feed and water the bird). I remember asking our son how he was feeling later that day, just to make sure he was all right.
“I feel such a deep sense of loss”, he told me — you have got to be kidding me! That seemed like something a psychology student might say, not a 10-year-old kid.
Another time our son was about 4 or 5 years old and we skipped Sunday School a couple times to go look for our first house. I remember him chastising us for our lack of commitment to God. After all, he said, “what’s more important, lookin’ at houses, or being in God’s House?” I looked at my wife and said, “This kid is not normal.”
Probably the most memorable quote that we recall from our son was witnessed by my wife while I was at work. Our son was about a year old, and was crawling around in his bedroom while my wife was in the bathroom. My wife heard our son yell, “SNAKES!!! SNAKES!!!” real loud from the other room. When my wife got to his bedroom she found that he had pulled his diaper off and had pooped on the floor. This was apparently the first time he had had a close encounter with what his parents had to routinely deal with during the diaper ritual. Strangely, it didn’t take long after that incident until our son was potty trained.
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