Mall walking revisited

Case,

I am going to accomplish my goal of 365 posts this year, one way or the other. One way is to get creative (or lazy, depending on how you look at it), so here's an anniversary post. I wrote this exactly a year ago today:

Love,
Dad

Case,

I'm about to mix some nature metaphors, so just go with it, OK?

Yesterday, we took you to the urban Serengeti — a place where wild creatures roam together in a state of tenuous existence. We took you to the mall.

By the time your mom and I finished our coffee, which adult animals need to keep up with their young, you had become typically restless. You wanted out of the stroller. So I picked you up and we started moving. But after a few steps I thought you might like a little ambulatory freedom. Your mom agreed it was a good idea to let you walk.

I thought you might be hesitant, maybe look back at one or both of us before moving forward with trepidation. Nope. As soon as your feet hit the ground, you took off like a drunken penguin, and seconds later you had speed-waddled your way to the river. I mean the children's play area.

Wanting to follow through on the whole freedom thing, it was decided that we'd follow you around for a while, despite our fear of the river. I mean the children's play area. (Seriously, if you ever have kids, you'll hate that damn place. There may even come a time you wish that an alligator would leap up, drag you away and put you out of your misery.)

You stumbled around for a few minutes — at one point trying to shove a hesitant child down a slide because he was in your way and you had run out of patience (you are your father's son) — and then, thankfully, you speed-waddled your way back to the relative safety of the open plains.

You spent much of the next 15 minutes reluctantly holding your mom's hand as you ventured through more of the mall. Along the way, I pictured you as a little baby on the floor of our old apartment. You were only a few months old and you'd lie on your stomach, occasionally rolling over but mostly struggling to move. At the time, I wondered aloud many times — to your mom's great annoyance —if you'd ever start crawling. Now, here you were, among a mass of people, carefree and mobile. It had only been a little over a year, but it felt like a lifetime.

You're 18 months old now, and you're growing up so fast. And, yes, it's a little sad, because I can't help but imagine you as an adult, doing adult things — like drinking coffee, perhaps to keep pace with your own child or children as you wonder upon a trip to the mall who the idiot was that decided it was smart to corral large groups of germ-ridden animals into a confined space. Those days will be here before I know it.

In my more selfish moments, I just wish you'd stay my little boy forever. But as I sit here typing with a cold, feeling as if it might be preferable for an alligator to come and drag me away, I am snapped back to reality (see what I did there?) by remembering that as much as I'd like for you to grow up slower (or not at all), the opportunity to watch it happen — at whatever speed — is one of life's greatest gifts.

Love,
Dad