My son Z-Man turns 7 today. SEVEN! Time moves so quickly with little ones. One of my goals in life is to stay as present as possible, to absorb each moment of life as it happens’ especially when it comes to family… especially when it comes to my guys.
Z-Man is such a great inspiration for living in the moment. He still lives in a world where magic happens’ where Santa is real. He is just now sorting out that Scooby-Doo is imagined and MythBusters is true.
Z-Man lives his life fully present and in the NOW. Things that are sad saturate him’ and then in 10 minutes’ something that’s funny tickles him to his funny bone. He lives with excitement for almost everything (the only thing that deflates his sails is putting away clean clothes.) He races to get the mail, zooms to brush teeth, zips out the door to go ride his bike. Everything is adventure’ everything is worth getting exciting about.
We have a Thanksgiving Day Tradition here at the Schipul Office. We munch, we mingle, we visit with family, and then… we race. We race PlasmaCars in the parking garage… younger and older… we race. And Z-Man, bless him, he believes we race every day. He has asked me at dinner, ‘Did you race the cars today?†He gets super excited when he comes to visit me at work and asks me every time, ‘Where are the racing cars?†As many times as I tell him we only race on Thanksgiving’ he has believed we race all the time.
Today… today is the day… today we race! And Z-Man has finally gotten it down that we don’t race every day. So today, he thinks we are racing just for his birthday! He popped his head into our dark room this morning before 5AM and quietly snuck back to his bed only to happily emerge at 6:23 exclaiming, ‘Today is my BIRTHDAY!â€
And I am inspired… what would it be like to live my life with that much excitement- to cherish each moment and the magic in it.
Z-Man teaches to me to live each day like its PlasmaCar Race Day.
Happy Birthday Son… you are blessing and a treasure and a joy.
My life is richer because you are in it.