Rocket Man...

I'm getting things ready for a birthday party, next Wednesday. My son has a birthday on Sunday, but he will be out of town. So, we are celebrating it next Wednesday. All of us, Mom, Dad, stepmom, kids....all of us.

He came to us on Leap Year Day. It was so appropriate: he just doesn't do anything the same way others do it. He's Rocket Man.....Tower of Power. To me, anyway.

Such a sweet little boy, with curly brown hair and chubby cheeks. He liked to draw and did so for hours. He drew a picture once, of a store that sold ice cream. He put his whole family in the picture, too. And the name of the store?

Basket of Robins.....

That's what he thought it was, not Baskin/Robbins. And he didn't need 31 flavors: he liked the ice cream with little pieces of bubblegum in it. I remember well because I got to hold the bubblegum for him as he took it out of his ice cream.

He could write his name when he was three. In fact, he wrote his name, in crayon, on the back window of our station wagon one morning. I had loaded the kids in the car, still in their jammies, to take Daddy to work, so we could have the car for the day.

When I got home, there he was, looking out the back window, and grinning. I decided that the best punishment for writing on the window was to make him clean it off. Mean mother that I was, I made him sit in the back of the car, by himself, and wash the crayon off the window.

I was glued to the kitchen window, keeping a close eye on him. As teenage girls walked by our driveway, heading to school, they would smile and wave at him. He smiled and waved back. I guess what he learned had nothing to do with the consequences for writing on the car window.....

Cute is its own reward.....

He was my middle child, and he had all the middle child issues. His sister was the oldest and his brother was the youngest. He was just the middliest, and that wasn't as cool. Or so he thought...

What he was more than made up for any loss of status when his brother was born. He has always had a way of looking at things that just delights me. I remember in high school, he informed me that his grades were not a reflection of his ability to learn but, more appropriately, a reflection on the teachers' ability to teach.

I think he was right.

He did go to Europe during the summer after his junior year of high school. He was part of a group of students who were studying French and had mastered it well enough to be turned loose in France and try out their language skills.

Lots of years have passed since then. He still has a little bit of curl in his brown hair. His eyes still dance when he is telling a funny story, and he still has a delightful way of viewing the world. He isn't brilliant, wildly successful in the business world, or a highly-paid athlete. He's just my middle child, my Leap Year Baby, and a very nice man.

He's my Rocket Man....