Phillip Allen
07-14-2006, 11:50 AM
Hell is trying to instill lost, fleeting, flying moments into the adults wherein exists your lost children.
Divorced…an old story these days. The wife wanted a different man in the house and I got kicked out long ago now. I ran across this and thought it might be of interest to others…I wrote it last year.
Today I showed my six year old granddaughter how to mark a radius cut on a boat rudder. She watched then went back to petting the cat, apparently not interested…but she heard and will remember the point years from now. “My grandfather showed me how to do things to wood and make it turn into a boat”…that IS the point. It was not important that she remember how to scale a radius, it was/is important that she remember Grandfather showing her things…perhaps even wonderful things. Those moments are lost for us with my children and I don’t think they even know it…but I do. I know it again each time I have such a moment with a grandchild…sweet misery I would not pass the chance to repeat again and again. I believe values, life training, manners and a myriad other things are given to a child in little bits and pieces…a moment here and there…in the watching of wood shavings fall from the bench. Each shaving is a precious moment in a child’s rearing to be carried in remembrances later. They are to be brought out at odd moments or even subconsciously. They are seeds in the vessel that is your child…the vessel that becomes an adult to carry on the training with his own children and they, in turn, with their children. I desperately want to pass on those seeds of thought I received from my grandmothers and from my mother and father…it is of such importance that it cannot be trusted to others.
Divorced…an old story these days. The wife wanted a different man in the house and I got kicked out long ago now. I ran across this and thought it might be of interest to others…I wrote it last year.
Today I showed my six year old granddaughter how to mark a radius cut on a boat rudder. She watched then went back to petting the cat, apparently not interested…but she heard and will remember the point years from now. “My grandfather showed me how to do things to wood and make it turn into a boat”…that IS the point. It was not important that she remember how to scale a radius, it was/is important that she remember Grandfather showing her things…perhaps even wonderful things. Those moments are lost for us with my children and I don’t think they even know it…but I do. I know it again each time I have such a moment with a grandchild…sweet misery I would not pass the chance to repeat again and again. I believe values, life training, manners and a myriad other things are given to a child in little bits and pieces…a moment here and there…in the watching of wood shavings fall from the bench. Each shaving is a precious moment in a child’s rearing to be carried in remembrances later. They are to be brought out at odd moments or even subconsciously. They are seeds in the vessel that is your child…the vessel that becomes an adult to carry on the training with his own children and they, in turn, with their children. I desperately want to pass on those seeds of thought I received from my grandmothers and from my mother and father…it is of such importance that it cannot be trusted to others.