It hasn’t been a great first couple hours this morning.  Unmotivated to start looking for new business from scratch, unconvinced on whether to pursue light bulbs in my mind, disappointed with the list of new efforts stagnating on my laptop.

I headed upstairs to click the coffee maker back on, heating up the final two cups of coffee.  After a quick pit stop, I wandered over to the now weathered kitchen table that the five of us eat almost all of our meals.  I plopped down to take in the wonderment of mother and son, at work with Play-Doh.

It’s a decision we’ve made or avoided making over the last decade or so, the mother of our boys setting aside her credentials as a Chemist and Chemical Engineer to take on her primary vocation of mother.  It is a rare blessing that we have as a family, these imperceptible nudges and nuanced directions to turn babies into boys, and hopefully boys into men.

Maybe it would be better if this asset called stay-at-home-mother was deployed rigorously toward advanced tutoring, contemporary fitness drills, some new-age art and creativity mind-melding.  Yet it was the two of them sitting on the bench, a plastic bin of realized profits amid stray plastic knives, clay becoming eyes and pizza and the imaginings of a fifty-month old.

I sat across from them, just taking it in after wasting two hours of my life this morning, trying to think up a way to think up a way to find what comes next.  If you stumbled here, hello.  If you have some youngster that shares your DNA, take a big step back this afternoon or evening and just be in his or her midst, either alone or with your spouse/lover/significant other.

Stay-at-home or not, travel heavily or not, juggle or not.  In my Suburbia with my Ti-Vo at the ready, the blessing of witnessing a mother nurturing a child is as magical today as ever.

It’s been refreshing in some ways to accidentally step away from this site, this after investing a significant amount to refresh the look and feel of my site.  I missed the third anniversary of the launch of my blog in the process.  In essence, I took probably 3-6 weeks off to launch a new soccer club, and I have been richly rewarded to invest so much discretionary time into something of great value to others.

As with most folks, alot has happened in the last few weeks.  Probably the highlight away from the soccer venture was taking my wife to an evening with Julie Andrews.  I thought it would be fairly dull, to be honest.  Andrews had throat surgery over a decade ago, and she retired her voice soon after.  We made our way to the new ampitheater which now houses the Atlanta Symphony for what promised to be an evening of music narrated by Andrews.  What was rolled out was a gift to everyone there.  “The Sound of Music” notes were unmistakable from from the ASO, then the images came on the big screens around the stage.

Andrews came out with three men and two women, and the quintet would sing different Rogers and Hammerstein songs solo or together.  Andrews would take over or join them on occasion, and you really didn’t care what she sounded like.  Her vocal range, once like a sparrow’s, had been transformed into a Lou Rawls-like bass at times.  She would change key in mid-song, much like you or I would in some sing-along.  It was an incredible gift that she has given us for the last fifty years, and it was an incredible gift that she gave my wife and me that Saturday evening.

One of the forgotten gems that she shared was her first television appearance, a live production of “Cinderalla” in 1957.

From “My Fair Lady” to “The King and I,” notes morphed from memories decades old.

From thirty years ago, an Evening with Julie Andrews in Japan (1977)

These days seem like gifts to me, I must confess.  After days of drifting and bobbing, days of neglect, days of forbidden thoughts, days of self, I cherish each day of potential now, each day of nurturing, each day of subtle joy.

I am thankful for the love of my life choosing me each morning and evening when life could be easier away from me.  She is growing her hair to chop it off as a gift to cancer victims, but she’s become more beautiful to me with each passing day.  That beauty will fade, I realize.  It’s never been about the beauty for me.  When you find a spirit so vast yet gentle, you cherish each and every moment with that soul.

Our boys started school (7th and 5th grade), leaving our youngest to hold down the fort as he waits for his final year of pre-school to commence.  I wait for the day when the boys walk away from me, when I no longer am fun or interesting, when I’m unable to create a spark in the eye of one of these three young men.  The older boys are definitely on their own at twelve and ten, but they still love their mother dearly and still love me.

These gifts, the gift of a new day.

I don’t remember the last time I took a week off from my blog.  This wasn’t planned, just a tidal wave of busy-ness overwhelming.

My wife just headed out of town to see her friend, and they’ll be meeting at her parents’ place in the mountains.  I’ll have the boys here this weekend, and I will still be extremely busy.  I’m hoping I can make it through.

The boys have gone through some changes in the last few months, and maybe this weekend will be a time I can refocus on them.  I’ve had the blessing of being in their midst much more than most fathers, but I’m in their midst much more than I am really with them and focused on them.  I can feel that pinging around that can happen, where you just knock down nail heads that stick up from time to time.  I just need some renewed intimacy with each of them.

All of my daily habits of time-wasting and meandering have evaporated over the last couple weeks.  No YouTube, no surfing, no poker, no TV, not much of anything but being diligent.  I am loving building something, and I really hope it stays on track.

I’m a daily blogger who needs to get things out.  As I’ve been overwhelmed by work the last three weeks, it’s been difficult to get me from inside to dumped on here.

I’ve really been at 110% for several weeks, and it has been a bit strange for me.  I have barely seen my boys since they returned from Hilton Head.  They’ve been here, and we’ve walked past one another, but I haven’t really interacted much with them.  It’s not that I’ve mistreated them or my wife, I’ve just been unable to take a breath and focus on each of them individually or even as a group.

Working alone most of the time definitely affects you.  It gives one a false sense of how much you’re getting done, overshooting and underestimating regularly.  I may be much more productive than I realize, I don’t know.

In case you missed it, here is an incredible article from the Sunday NY Times Magazine.  It’s called When Mom and Dad Share it All, and it is a fascinating exploration into the world of the distribution of labor in the household among husband and wife.  Whether you struggle with this or not (and especially if you’re oblivious to the whole topic), I’d highly recommend reading it.

My wife and I used to have a very structured process to sharing the workload of the home before kids.  We divided chores then drew any bad chores from a hat, sort of like a draft.  We then could trade them back and forth if required.  Fast forward seventeen years and three boys, and I work while she does the housework for the most part (who am I kidding–for the TOTAL part).  The article is pretty sobering, especially from someone who does little around the house.

For some couples, failure to conceive is the most heartbreaking situation in their lives.  It destroys marriages, drives wives into depression, and sends husbands into isolation.  It is difficult to imagine the pain that must accompany a desire for children yet lacking the means.

We seem to have the opposite problem, firing babies out at the blink of an eye.  It turns out that I made a good decision not to be sexually active in my youth, as I would have been a father at 13, 15, or 17.  I must be what one would call virile or potent, whichever word is accurate.

Five years ago, our second son was finishing up his last year of pre-school.  Our life was great, two boys, business rocking along, an easy, manageable family of four.  I was in Phoenix later that year when my wife told me that, in fact, her OB/GYN had just come to understand what it means when they say that only 1 in 1000 women become pregnant using an IUD.

He brought more risk to our family and to me as a father.  I went from having two chances to be a poor father to three chances to be a poor father.  He was an inconvenience to our quaint world here in Suburbia, forcing us to learn about a whole new crop of horrible television shows like the Backyardigans and Nora the Explorer (Little Einsteins excluded, as it is terrific).

He is, simply put, a gift to us.  He is a gift to me.  The little hands of my two older boys are a distant memory, but his slips gently within my chunky mitt.  These last couple years have been extra special, getting to hear his whispers all the time, joining him for lunch on an almost daily basis.

Thank you for coming into my life, and Happy Birthday.

Our youngest turns four-years old next week, and we’re having his party today after school.  Our area is maybe a bit above average when it comes to going over-the-top on parties, although hardly reaching the epic elephant and clown parties held elsewhere.  Probably the best kids party I ever missed was for the daughter of John Smoltz when our middle son was three or so.  The boys went to a pre-school that also included the children of Smoltz and Greg Maddux among others (and no, this was not an Eastern European academy for the athletically gifted, although…).  My wife almost got into a fight with Maddux as she was trying to leave and he was trying to get out of his truck.

Anyways, Smoltz had just had his Tommy John surgery, and his daughter was in our son’s class.  The party was at one of those kids gymnastics kind of places, and I got too busy to take him, so my wife went.  There was some sort of craft that included painting, which he had no interest in (mostly girls at the party, I think).  So as my wife recounted it, he decided to pull Smoltz into one of the foam pits and test his shoulder by jumping and wrestling with him.  Had this gone bad for Smoltz, we might very well have quickly relocated to Alaska or Prague to escape the wrath of Braves fans.

We’ve done parties at different locales for the boys (the video game place and the laser tag place among the example).  I think the funnest are the ones we wing here at the house ourselves.  There are many great websites to help in planning, but here are a couple quick hints for throwing a party for your kids (especially directed at dads!).

1. Make it co-ed Probably 95% of the parties our older boys have gone over the last six years have been boy-only parties.  I think that’s the easy way out for everyone involved, as locations and themes become much easier if only boys or girls show up.  So many activities kids are involved in are boy-only or girl-only, and I’ve always tried to push us to have co-ed parties whenever we can.  The kids have fun regardless really, and it’s a good way to broaden your own circle of friends as you invite other parents into the mix.
2. DIY parties I’m a big believer in hosting a party at your home and planning everything yourself.  It is much more work to do-it-yourself rather than showing up somewhere and plopping down your money for the Birthday Package.  I think I’ve been more connected to the birthday experience when I’ve been involved in planning a party.  The best party I threw was for our middle son’s 9th birthday.  I coerced my wife into inviting girls by telling her I would handle the theme and activities.  We invited maybe 12-14 kids, and I put on the Survivorlympics.  The kids pulled bandannas from a bag to split into tribes, then I led them through a variety of fairly stupid challenges (bird seed relay where they had to pass birdseed to each other using their bandanna, Grab the Hat where they played musical chairs by running after these totally goofy hats).  The goodie bags (the least favorite thing about parties) became a grab bag of all the stupid props we used, including these $1 gigantor leprechaun hats.
3. Give them pictures My other best thing about that party was taking photos throughout, firing them into an 11″x17″ poster I’d already designed, then printing them to give to everyone at the end of the party.  Very easy (OK, the 11″x17″ requires having a home office with a $5k copier/printer, I realize), and a unique thing to take away.
4. Give them free time Just having time to do nothing at a party can often be a great thing, although free time should be sprinkled throughout.  You don’t want kids to group up and exclude the uncool kid (especially if that is your child), and you have to be pretty careful about younger kids.  A little free time does kids good, though.

More hints later today.

My eldest is missing his soccer game this Saturday (gasp!) to go on a 6th grade church retreat for the weekend. We were asked to write an encouraging note to our children. Here is mine.

Some people think that a father’s job is to discipline children so that they don’t act up and get in trouble. Others believe the job is to protect them from all the bad people and circumstances in the world; that way, nothing bad can happen.

It’s a lot more complicated than that, and you’re just starting to see it. The job is really one where you try to equip your child with values and skills while creating an environment that gives them the best chance to be a terrific adult. Values and skills are two very different things indeed. Skills are abilities that you either have or can foster and grow, things like studying, playing a sport or instrument, and even being someone’s friend. Values are the beliefs that guide everything you do, from the very big decisions you make in your life to the quick choices that you make a dozen times a day.

It would be easier if parents could simply decide everything for their child, kind of like you were setting up a new character in a video game where you could determine everything they would become, everything they would believe. God didn’t make any of us that way; he gave us free choice. He designed you and me to decide a zillion things every day, from irrelevant things like what we’ll wear and eat to huge things like if we believe in Him, if we love Him, if we will follow His will in our lives.

As you know, I am a Christian, accepting Jesus as my savior when I was nine or ten, about when you did. My own faith has grown and changed over the last 30 years since I was twelve. It’s been difficult for me at times; sometimes I wasn’t cool (OK, almost all the time!), sometimes I was left out of things, sometimes people made fun of me. When your Mom and I were first married, we worked with high school students in Princeton, New Jersey as advisors at our church. They were so different than the kids I’d grown up with; super-smart, but most of them questioned everything and didn’t believe much of anything. We realized that just saying, “God loves you, Jesus died for you, and that’s all true because the Bible says so and I say so,” isn’t good enough.

God didn’t make robots, and you aren’t a robot. It’s OK to have questions about your faith. It’s OK if you hear something from someone and have questions about it or don’t agree with it. All of that is what it means to move from a child in Christ to a Christian. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:11 “When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.“ God designed all Christians to not understand everything about Him and about how to live for him; that’s what it means when he says when he was a child, he acted like a child.

Becoming a man means to become smarter about God and also to start doing the things that God wants us to do in our lives. Sometimes, I ask God to show me what He wants me to do with the big decisions of my life. In Jesus, He showed us how we should live each day: to pray and speak to God, to love others and show them compassion, to do things and serve others, to read the Bible and learn through talking about it, and to understand the only way we can come to Jesus. That way? Not doing things, but simply admitting to Him that I sin and do wrong things every day, that I am really not good enough for God to love me, yet He not only loves me He allowed His Son to die so that I could have all these sins that I commit to be erased and forgotten.

God doesn’t ask you to be the perfect Christian or the best Christian. No, He simply asks you and me this question: I love you, do you love me? If yes, show me.

I admit I haven’t really gotten used to Google Reader nor Bloglines previously (dork noted). Anyways, I had a shared EconLog site I’d never heard of which responded to a Steve Levitt post who I’ve met a few times (author of Freakonomics with one more WSOP cash than I have). It has to do with what are our goals as a parent or maybe as a father. I’ll add my own view following those of Levitt and Bryan Caplan (author of EconLog).

“I can’t believe how much I disagree with Steve Levitt’s goals as a father. Here’s a line-by-line contrast:

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[Steve] I care most about raising kids who are happy and successful as adults, even if that happens to mean that they aren’t very happy as children.

[Bryan] I care most about raising kids, who, like me, believe in enjoying every single day of life.

(CC) I care most about raising kids who become capable, caring men, are not limited by the decisions of their youth, share my values and faith, and have virtually unlimited opportunities through the choices of their youth.

——————————————-

[Steve] I want my kids to like me when they are grown up, but I also want them to do what I tell them to do, the first time I tell them to do it.

[Bryan] I too want my kids to like me when they are grown up. But I’m happy to amicably negotiate with them except on issues of imminent danger and daily routines.

(CC) I want to have a real relationship with my kids when they are grown up, but I want to have an ever-growing relationship with my wife once they are grown. I want them to respect their mother throughout their youth. I want each of the boys to strive to live up to his commitments. I hope that each of them builds a capability to be proactive in their daily life, a skill that is a strength of my wife’s and one she actively works with them on.

——————————————

[Steve] I don’t want my kids to be sissies, the way I was — I want them to be tough, and able to take whatever criticism and misfortunes the real world has to offer.

[Bryan] Laugh if you like, but I want to give me kids a better life than I had. I don’t want them to be bullied or mocked by teachers or other kids. Since adult life is far more civilized than childhood, sheltering your kids is not “delaying the inevitable”; it’s skipping pointless suffering.

(CC) I want each of my boys to define themselves less in how others see them and more in how they see themselves. I want them to choose the tougher road, to be the one to lift up the less fortunate or less accepted in their midst.

——————————————————

[Steve] I also want them to be creative, and to take risks (but not too many risks).

[Bryan] For once, Steve and I almost agree. I hope that my kids are creative, and I hope that they take intellectual and social risks. Why? Because they’re intrinsically valuable, and instrumentally profitable. At the same time, I hope they avoid physical risk-taking, because they’re neither.

(CC) I want each of my boys to be creative as they see fit, not in an area or direction I might desire for them. I’m understanding more and more that your children are each unique and won’t share the same skills, capabilities, and personalities. Honestly, I haven’t thought as much about risk taking, so put me under uncommitted there.

—————————————————-

Awkward question for discussion (from Bryan): Suppose you could have either Bryan, Steve, or CC as your dad. Who would you pick - and why? And what are your own answers?

So, the two questions I’ve laid out that we’re continually confronting:

1. Is our role as parents to protect or equip our boys? What is the relationship between these two choices?
2. Should we micro-manage social interactions of our boys, particularly who they spend time with? This includes how to schedule free time as well as how to increase the social skills and choices of the less socially-adept son and create more responsible choices for the more adept son.

These questions are as old as time and recently have spawned new parental initiatives. Let’s look at Question #1 first.

Home schooling, religious schools, private schools, school district selection (through home ownership or renting) are all ways of influencing the individuals that children interact with. None of us should feel that we are somehow immune to this; on the contrary, each of us have made big decisions like where we will live that have a direct impact on the education and direction of our children.

My wife and I have both been fervent believers that our primary job is to equip our children rather than protect them. We don’t do that recklessly, but we have made many decisions that focus more on instilling values and building skills and less on protection.

You don’t need me to state what surely is the obvious now, that our generation as parents overindulge their children. Every child has every toy imaginable, 1st graders have cell phones, every participant gets a trophy, on and on it goes.

The additional factor that makes this even more dangerous or at least more concerning to all parents imo is that no generation of children have the variety of choices that this generation will have. Children 5-15 years of age have literally unlimited choices in almost every aspect of life in the United States including: religion, education, residence, sexuality, ethnicity of partner, career, hobbies, network of others. Could I have pursued Buddhism as a teenager or young adult? Sure, but I had little exposure, no support, and possible persecution growing up in a small town in the South. Fast-forward to my eldest, and there is really no barrier for him to investigate his faith, determine Buddhism is the best path for him, and pursue it.

Does this means that our abilities to micro-manage our children is diminished? I think so. The reason you manage anything is to control the variable to get a more predictable result. With the number of variables as well as the options within each variable increasing for our children, it becomes more and more difficult to manage these variables.

I’m finding that our role has shifted to specific values-based teaching with specific scenarios and context vs generic, ambiguous parenting. It isn’t enough to teach our boys good vs bad, right vs wrong. We now need to get into the nitty gritty of what that means in their daily life, how they become faced with decisions, how they make choices, the results of those choices, and how they would change their process. And we have to do this in a way that is simple enough for them to get it.

It isn’t easy, and it takes fostering a continued level of trust and candor that may escape us either occasionally or regularly. I don’t think our objective should be to create good boys necessarily or even boys who do good. Our objective should be to create capable boys with our shared values understood and instilled in them.

Therein lies the quandary. Too much protection can lead to lack of practical experience in equipping. What good is it to teach a skill if it is never used? Not much. Yet what good is it to put our boys in situations that are more likely to lead to negative results? Again, not much good. Parenting is as much about risk assessment as anything. And we can’t grapple with risk assessment unless we have an intimacy with the situation and the facts involved.

Which leads to Question #2 (or not, but I need to get on to it regardless!). As a child, I was always involved in sports, was seemingly liked but not necessarily the most popular in school, spent little time with specific friends (more time in sports, church, and other extracurricular activities), related more with kids older than me, and tended to have the confidence to set my own path. Our school was 50% African-American, 50% Caucasian, and I reached across the divide to spend time with most groups and cliques in our school (maybe excluding Band people). I had more friendships with girls than boys, I think, and I also always had a girlfriend.

Our boys are different from me but similar in some ways. We now are more frequently confronted with the social network that our boys are building, the risks involved, and the paths they are on. Some of our fellow parents have been very actively involved in managing this process. One couple has gone as far as forcing classroom changes when their child isn’t in a class with their best buddies.

Question 2 is an aggregate of three separate questions, so let me get into each of them.

Social interactions that put our child at risk These should be managed by parents, but how we do manage this is a delicate process. I think most of us remember this from our own childhood, that we couldn’t play with or date someone because they were bad. Most of the time, it simply draws us closer to those baddies. Yet as parents, we really need to draw boundaries. And sometimes the solution isn’t a simple one. The risks become greater and have more significant impact on their lives as they grow older. We’re finding that when we start drawing lines around these relationships, we suddenly are left staring at are perfect boys sitting alone in our living room. We need to be close enough to these relationships to truly know when the risk is great as the path will be a difficult one.

Social interactions that alter our child’s values This confronts more of us more regularly than the first situation. For my wife and I, this probably is regularly seen in two broad areas: our faith and materialism. Our boys are with others who run the gamut of homes of faith, including agnostics, atheists, Hindus, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, and indifferents. We definitely are confronted with others who have decided to place their children with a higher concentration of children and teachers of the same faith and belief system. This may be in the form of Christian schools for us, but it also is in extracurricular activities. Having the boys involved in activities with other kids whose families seem to be like-minded reduces some of the variables, although not necessarily eliminating them. The more difficult decisions are materialism for us. We’re surrounded by playas in a playground of playthings, and it is something we continually fight. I’m sure I’m pretty hypocritical in this area, as materialism is relative. We combat this by discussing it candidly with the boys. I don’t focus on individual friends or individual toys but more about why there are differences in what we have vs others, whether things define us, and what it means. We’re also moving into discussions about what to do with our resources. That includes stewardship (giving to others, charity, and faith-based organizations), saving, investing, and spending.

Social interactions that manipulate the cool factor This is the area I’ve spent the least time on and don’t know if I feel very comfortable with it. We’ve always taken a fairly hands-off approach to this, from letting the boys dress themselves at a very early age to the friends they spend time with. Should we help along a child who isn’t in the in crowd? I just don’t know. Look, I’m not exactly the poster child for hip to say the least. We’re taking a hands-off approach toward this, for better or worse.

I don’t know how much wisdom is there, more questions than answers as always here. But I would be very interested in everyone’s thoughts on all this.

Trip report to follow possibly, but here is the eulogy I gave yesterday at my grandfather’s funeral. I had a couple of tough spots where I broke down, but I made it through. The graveside ceremony had Military Honors, which was great.

JT Hellums Eulogy by Craig Cunningham

Winston Churchill, in a radio address in 1939, described the Russians this way: “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” He just as easily could have been describing my grandfather, JT Hellums.

JT Hellums was the fourth of seven children in a family of ultimately eighteen siblings and half-brothers and sisters, yet having been raised in a herd of chaotic children, he often stood alone in life. He was a man at times apart from his family yet his role as grandfather may have been his ultimate calling. He was a weathered man, hardened by the times atop scaffolds and skyscrapers yet he was a man of great gentleness. He was a vagabound whose world stood still in Tupelo with his two boys surrounding him. And it was a heart forever broken when he was forced to bury a son in the midst of a time of such joy in all of our lives.

It was no accident that it was Jamesie’s chess set that he looked at every day as he sat in his chair in Albertville. I don’t believe it was because he loved him more, but that these rooks and pawns were a symbol of both the great loss that he had in life but also the great joy he brought to his days and, in turn, brought to each of us.

This man was as cantankerous as an old man could be at times. It seemed at times that his ideal family visit would have been better served if our homes had a drive-in window for hugs and grub. Any trip that took over an hour and you stayed over an hour was often an hour too long for him.

He could be a cranky old fool, but it was his dry wit that endeared all of us to him. He handed that wit down to his son Jerry and on to several of his grandsons. Papa was a funny man in a hilarious life that often bordered on the ridiculous. These scenes in his existence would have been rejected as ideas for television series, yet there they were, live and in color. He demanded a pickle jar be used on trips rather than stopping at a restroom along the way. His staple diet for several years was samples given out at Sam’s, making the rounds two or three times to get his fill. My boys called his home in Tupelo the Cat Farm as he somehow had gathered half the cats in the county to watch him ride his riding lawn mower. Fighting with Anne over Christmas chocolates. Rushing away on any occasion to watch his beloved Braves.

I used to travel heavily in my career, and I would often call him from some airport or hotel. I know he thought it was the coolest thing that his grandson was calling from Shanghai or Cleveland or Seattle or Paris. For me though, it was a chance to be with someone who cared about me when I was alone somewhere in the world.

We would talk about his Braves mostly, and I would tease him about their poor hitting, and he would defend Bobby Cox and his great staff of Smoltz, Glavine, and Maddux. Papa could have been the poster child for what Ted Turner envisioned when he created TBS, a fanatic in the South who became so attached to the Braves that he would watch every inning available on the SuperStation. The only thing he enjoyed more than watching them on television was getting to see them in person, and he always told me all about it when I would call him.

He loved the Braves, but all the ladies loved him all over the place for much of his life. I marveled that Granny Anne was able to keep him tied down, because he was always a charmer. It was a credit of how much he loved her that he settled down for the long haul and took himself off the market. He’d still flash his smile or work whatever mojo he had to send some sales clerk or nurse into a tizzy. That was the same mojo that somehow escaped every Hellums, Link, and Cunningham male offspring. No, we weren’t blessed with the natural charisma that Papa flicked on when needed. It took every bit of mojo Jerry and Brian and Scott and I had just to get one girl to finally give us the time of day, yet Papa always had ladies swooning everywhere.

He could talk and joke for hours yet he kept some things very close to him. He only recently opened up to any of us about his time in the South Pacific during World War II.

Yes, he was an enigma. He had been gone working for much of the childhoods of his two boys and two girls. Maybe he knew he missed some special times, because any failures he had as a young father were advanced tenfold as a grandfather. He just seemed to connect with kids in a special way. I’ve never really tried to figure out why, but it was something special in him that stayed with him literally until his final days.

Honey and I brought our three boys to see him three weeks ago. Jamie and Allen loved talking to him, but they quickly bolted for the front yard when Papa began dozing off. We threw the football, and the boys fought much like Priscilla and Jerry and Jamesie and Jane did fifty-plus years ago. When I went inside, Papa was awake and transfixed watching our three year old, Joseph. Joseph has been on an Army soldier kick the last few weeks, and he’s uses a stick for his gun. We have about thirty sticks laying around the house. Anyways, there was Papa watching Joseph peer around the sofa, pointing his gun and shooting at him. Joseph calls me either Captain or Sir whenever he’s playing Army, and he calls himself Captain Ginger. He was a bit intimidated by Papa at first but quickly warmed to him. “Captain Ginger, this is the General,” I told Joseph as I pointed to Papa. “General, where is the enemies?” Joseph asked Papa. Papa looked at Joseph and said, “General, well alright then.” As we got ready to leave that afternoon, Papa again had roused himself up and again his eyes were glued on Joseph as he belly crawled around the sofa with his gun. Papa was one big smile, and I was watching a scene that had been repeated for the last forty years. Joseph was Julie and Brian and Cathy and Andy and Scott and Elise and Christie and me. We were each blessed, and I beyond all of us as I had my grandfather for forty-two years and for three boys and for my lovely wife.

And I was blessed this week as I was able to see him again and again at Shepherd’s Cove Hospice. We snuck in a few lucid sentences each day. I was able to give him an update of Tim Tebow and the Dolphins first win and Tom Glavine’s return to the Braves and Houston Nutt, and he nodded or gave some retort or smiled or asked some follow-up question.

And I was blessed as I left to head home. There were times in his last days when he would speak in random thoughts or to people from his youth, times where he wouldn’t recognize Priscilla and Jane. And then there were times when he was able to talk to each of us. Tuesday morning when I had to leave, I walked to the right side of his bed and told him I had to go. His eyes were shut, but he quickly took my hands that were near and he pulled them to his lips. I leaned down and kissed him on those lips, and what I thought was an invisible departure from my sick grandfather became five of the best minutes of my life. With all of the strength that was left in him, he told of his love for me, he charged me to love my boys, he told me to care for Honey, and he kissed me and held me. His last words to me were, “I love you, son.” He’d said good-bye to me, but it was each of his grandchildren’s faces and the eyes of his great grandchildren and those even now in their mothers’ wombs that he saw when he looked up at me that last time.

JT Hellums was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. I don’t care that I never solved the great riddle of JT Hellums. No, it was enough for each of us to simply be wrapped in the mystery of Papa and to share in the bountiful love he had for life and for us all.