“I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night, and I think of myself what a wonderful world.”
There is so much beauty in this world.
All you have to do is look for it.
For me, the beauty I have found can be covered with six words.
Artemis. Lexington. Albanie. Malachi. Simon. Coen.
They range in age from 16 (Malachi) to 7 (Albanie) with the other four in between. I have known three of them from birth and I arrived in the middle of the story with the other three. I have written before about hearing Arti crying long-distance from Beijing five minutes after she was born, which was sort of the beginning of it all for me as a grandparent.
As much as I have always loved being a dad to my two children for nearly 30 years now, being a grandfather took it to another level. Seeing the wonderful job my daughter has done as a mother to her children fills me with pride. She has an extremely demanding career as a diplomat and also has made time for each of her children.
She had a good role model. When Nicole came to this country to stay in 1987, Pauline was 7 and Virgile was 2. As high-pressured as her job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was, she made it a priority to devote one hour to each of the children every evening.
When I came along five years later, one thing she stressed to me was how easy it is to hurt children, that it’s very important to maintain positivity and let them enjoy their dreams.
My own parents seemed half the time to want to make sure I understood what a difficult place the world was. I don’t know how many times I was told the world didn’t revolve around me. As if I didn’t understand that. The message I took away from that was that I was nobody special on their list of priorities.
It’s funny. I told my kids that they would always be at or near the top of my list of priorities and it worked out pretty well. They both breezed through college with amazing grades and both got great jobs at which they excel.
Both Pauline and Virgile are truly beautiful people, and both have amazing spouses.
I’m hoping to be around long enough to see Pauline into her fifties and Virgile into his mid forties. My only regret is that I won’t live long enough to see our family into a third generation — great-grandchildren.
I saw both of my parents have years and years of health problems at the end of their lives. I have often said if I could make it to 80 without being a burden, that would be good enough for me. But if I check out at 80, I will only see Albanie make it to age 15.
Maybe a world with so much beauty in it is worth hanging around a little longer.
Maybe 85.
Or even more. I really want to see how things work out for the Spectacular Six.