Jesus answered and said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, a son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees his father doing; for what he does, his son will do also.”
~ John 5:19
Ima and Tatang are long gone now. But it seems I am getting to know them better and love them even more deeply as the years go by. Is this just a feeling or is this for real? My faith tells me it is for real. It is part of who I am today.
And I am now thinking of my own sons. There is so much in them that I know comes from me. But in reality, they are their own persons. Anabelle and I ‘had’ them for a while. But I am amazed at the gentlemen they have become. And they almost seem like strangers to me. I am getting to know them with the passing of time. They definitely love Anabelle and me better and more demonstratively than I have loved Ima and Tatang. They certainly know and can do a lot more at their age than I could during my time. They have seen more of life than I could even imagine when I was their age.
Now that we have our grandchildren, I realize even more profoundly how I still have to learn and understand. During our Marriage Encounter years ago, Anabelle and I wrote love letters to each other. And we were asked to read each letter twice: first, for the meaning; and then second, for the feeling.
Raising Martin, Mickey, and Macky was mainly for the meaning: what it meant to be a father, what are the things a father does, how does one live out fatherhood. Now that we are helping raise Jonathan and Jane, it seems to be mainly for the feeling: to catch that nuance of a smile or laughter that we missed the first time around, to relish that hug or embrace just one moment longer, to stay in the zone like there were no tomorrow to worry about, to engage in rote and repetition for this might not happen again, to live eternity in the quickness of a gleeful second.
Is this coming full circle or simply coming into the fullness of life?