Searching for a theme in this particular post may be an exercise in futility. This one is truly random.
It’s Veterans’s Day today. My last communication with my father before he died suddenly was a pic of my daughters wishing him a Happy Veterans’ Day to their favorite veteran. He was off having an adventure at the time, as he was prone to do, and was somewhere I knew he would not likely receive it right away. I never imagined I wouldn’t ever enjoy the opportunity of speaking to him ever again. I hope he did actually receive it. His granddaughters loved their ‘Pa’ dearly.
As I’m sure you already inferred from the previous paragraph, my father was a veteran. He served as a naval aviator during Vietnam, though he never actually went to Vietnam. He pushed very hard for me to join Navy ROTC when I went to college, I wanted nothing to do with it. It actually became a heated argument during orientation. He finally relented. It took years for us to discover the truth behind the outcome. I finally admitted that ROTC would have done me some good. He confided that he gave in because he discovered that the ROTC program at my school was in complete shambles.
My eldest daughter’s boyfriend turns twenty this weekend. Fortunately for me, she softened the blow of this news by reminding me that she turns nineteen this week.
Yesterday’s day off from work provided me the joyous opportunity to have lunch with Ms. Boss and my eldest Bosslet. Afterwards, we stopped by the coffee shop where my daughter works part-time to get a coffee. It was very gratifying to watch her navigating the adult world successfully – talking with us, chatting with her regular customers, executing her plan for the day. It looks like we may be on the verge of launching one into the world. One down, three to go.
The middle two Bosslets, freshmen in high school, just finished their first marching band season. They have found their tribe which make me very happy.
My youngest Bosslet is in her first year at the middle school, a place I am convinced takes perfectly wonderful children and transforms them into something I do not recognize. It’s happening again. Yes, I know this would happen regardless of whether they were middle school or not, but humor me.
The past two Veterans’ Day weekends included running a half marathon. That won’t be happening this year. In fact, a half marathon won’t be happening this year, period. A ten-miler in April will go down as my peak mileage for 2017. A health scare in June meant I only ran twenty miles for all of July. The aggravating part is that the health scare was almost completely unfounded and running would have helped. I never got back into my routine of running five miles at three times a week. I went for four yesterday and managed just three.
To all the veterans out there, Happy Veterans’ Day. Thank you so much for your service.