This past year our oldest daughter and her husband, made Cindy and I grandparents. Just reading that sentence out loud makes me feel old. Cindy’s solution to that problem was deciding what our new grandson would call us. We landed on “Mimi” for her, and “Pops” for me. It does take a little of the edge off.
Spending time with our grandson has caused me to stop and reflect on the days when our own children were young. When Josh, our oldest, came along and was born with Down Syndrome—At first we had no idea what that meant. But then the geneticist came in and informed us of all the things our newborn son would never do. Got to love the encouragement in those early days. Thankfully, many of the things he said Josh would never do are way, way back in our rear view mirror. I just wish that doctor could see him today!
But Josh’s development was slower than most. Truth be told, we really didn’t know what to expect, so we just took it one day at a time. Josh was 18 months old before he began to crawl like most “normal” kids. And he didn’t start walking until age 2.
So as we have done for his whole life, we made some accommodations. One of the early ones I came up with was a game we called, “Tackle The Guy With The Ball.” It was a game Josh and I played over and over and over again. Mostly because he loved it—Truth is, so did I.
We would both be down on the floor. I would roll the football over to Josh and then proceed to race over and tackle him—Thus the name, “Tackle The Guy With The Ball.”
I would roll the ball to him and he would gather it close to his body, then I’d race to him and embrace him with all the love and affection I could muster. He would laugh.
I’d tickle him, then fall back exhausted. He, without saying a word, made it clear he wanted to do it again. So we did just that, for what seemed like hours on end.
Today I am blessed with a 32 year-old son who loves to hold my hand as we walk into church. He sometimes saddles up alongside his mom or I and plants a great big kiss on our cheek.
As a dad I wouldn’t trade either experience for all the money in the world!
I guess accommodation is not such a bad thing after all.
