His grandparents and cousin and aunties were clapping, and then he started clapping, and then he was smiling after finding each egg. Good times!
(Me on my first bike.)
Also, today is the 13th anniversary of me riding home on my first motorcycle. It was a 1986 Yamaha Radian purchased for $2,200, all told, from the BMW dealer on San Carlos St. in San Jose, California thirteen years ago today. I only got the shortest bit of a ride in today on this anniversary but I did get to ride and those couple of miles felt great.
In other news, our second baby will be arriving any day now. I realized, beyond a doubt when driving to work this morning, that there is a part of me that is nervous about the upcoming birth experience. I don't want to be nervous, but I am so that's OK. It's just that it's an experience that I must go through, I can not avoid, and that knowledge tends to make me feel a little anxious even though I want the experience; as I do in this case. Knowing that I have not the option to avoid the ordeal gets me anxious. Knowing that I can not walk away, postpone, or ignore an experience makes me anxious. I can not avoid that our daughter will be on her way out soon and I don't want to. It's just that I can't and that has it's effect on me. Another part of me has embraced the adventure, welcomes the experience, is feeling good, comfortable, and very excited to meet and welcome our baby into the world outside.
I think this is how I have learned to deal with this flavor of anxiousness. After the summer of my freshman high school year, an important summer in the making of me, I started noticing what I was afraid of and then taking on those fears directly as a challenge. This started out as asking girls out, volunteering to speak in front of the class, walking up to people and talking, and generally embracing discomfort. This mentality has served me well and provided for a lot of experiences that have made my life flavorful. With so many of the experiences that I have relished was a choice to take on the experience and that came with the knowledge and comfort that I could have changed my mind and my direction if I chose to. Other experiences have been beyond my control, at least at some point in the unfolding, and I have had to face them willingly or not. Some of these I have embraced and savored and others I have not embraced and those have resulted in a less than desirable ozone-like flavor and aroma. Examples of these include when I cut my hand in a window as a child (was I nine?) and instantly thought, "Well, there goes my night, this is what I will be dealing with tonight, I can not take this back, there is no way to undo this, I will have to go to the hospital and deal with this." I did not embrace that experience. This resistance to what I can not avoid, this mode of thinking, or of feeling, is what I believe makes it difficult for me to deal with death and even hypothetical events beyond my control. Whether by my own making or by nature's consequence, it appears to be the same anxiousness, same solution, and the same satisfaction in coming through to other side of an uncomfortable situation if I embrace the experience. It is a slightly different flavor when knowing that I can't avoid a path into the experience, but a similarly full and positive feeling results when I accept and embrace the event anyway. Interesting. I am making my way through this perspective for myself as I type it. Plenty for me to think about and a good reminder to accept my nervousness and embrace the event of my daughter's birth as I did with my son's.
My baby girl is on her way and just knowing that I will soon be holding her and loving her in my arms makes me smile all the way from my deepest inside straight through to my everything.