Infant Envy

Tuesday:

You know, its a funny thing; kids that is. Two weeks ago today the one of the rather more significant things came in my general vicinity.  Weighing just barely a hair over 8 pounds, my nephew Devin came home to my family and I. You never really know what your life is going to end up like. You start out as a smaller version of you that basically doesnt contribute to society besides the joyous occasion of your birth and the blessing to your family. He doesn't talk, he doesn't eat much, and he has yet to pick my brother up from football practice, but one thing he does do is he just watches you as you live. I feel like the individual days I live aren't specifically that significant in my life, but my overall general path is really setting me in place into where I hope to end up and possibly with a pocket full of memories, good and bad. But each day he wakes up he is different. His skin seems to be that much tougher, the air seems to blow that much warmer, and the atmosphere seems to be that much more normal. Everyday he's bigger looking more and more like his father. The world is yet to be as difficult as we all make it out to be. He has no taxes to pay, no insurance bills, and no girlfriend. I try and think about what my life would be like without some of those thing and it leaves a bitter sweet taste in my mouth. Do I envy infancy? Do I envy the ignorance of childhood? Yes and no. We always say that when we were kids, we didn't have this weight of the world on our shoulders. But I tend to disagree. When I was a kid I had the weight of whether or not Amanda Schat had a crush on me. I had the weight of whether or not I can color inside the lines in my Aladdin coloring book. I had the weight that I had to try and stay away from Murphy; the big black dog who lived across the street from Acacia Park. Weight of the world? I guess it really depends on whether or not you'll allow yourself to be crushed by that weight and if so, are you able to get back up. Amanda Schat seemed to be the most important thing in my life, to the point where I thought I might marry her. I even told Alex Heck that I might. Does that have the same weight as our insurance bills or our tax returns? Do our marriages feel like they are the Rock of Gibraltar and if they fall then we will be alone, indefinitely. In my life they do. I have always done the justice to my soul as to wear my heart on my sleeve and won't leave any emotion I have left behind. It's all or nothing. So I look at my baby nephew as a person new to the world with so much love around him, and possibly the best parents a person could ask for. And I know that the world is waiting for him. I know that even though they may not seem like it, but the days really do count, no matter how old a person may seem.