As we continue down the historical road of life in my world, we've come to the time in my life that Lynn and I were blessed with our two wonderful children. We could not have scripted our children's entrance on the stage of life any more perfectly. First there was Heath and a father could not have been blessed with a more perfect firstborn. As new parents, we truly thought that he was the most beautiful baby that had ever graced God's creation. Then Tiffany came into the world a mere seventeen months later. She was a scrawny little thing with a round little face and was so precious. She literally slept almost constantly for the first several months of her life, only waking long enough to eat and get a diaper change and then back to sleep. For the first four or five years many people who saw the children thought they were twins because they were so close in size.
Through the years, as they grew toward young adulthood, we found that their closeness of age and size were just about the only similarities in our children. Heath was very smart and laid back and easy to deal with and Tiffany was very smart and headstrong and opinionated and difficult from the beginning. As a father, it was great to have a son who enjoyed doing things with "Daddy" and there are some extremely fond memories in my mind's files of the times we spent together. My dream, when our daughter came into the world, was one of a sweet, precious little girl that would be close to her father and of the wonderful relationship we would have as father and daughter. But as she grew, Tiffany would push me away and resist my efforts to be close to her. Fortunately, as mentioned in a previous post, great strides in her maturity level during the college years changed that attitude tremendously.
During the first few years of the children's lives, there were a multitude of precious memories that could be revisited. The trust in Daddy that Heath exhibited early in life was manifested in his habit of getting a running start and "swan diving" on me confidently expecting me to catch him. I can remember him crying to go with me to cut wood and then screaming in terror when the chainsaw cranked up. He'd eat pizza sometimes until he literally could not hold it. Then there was the time in his first year of tee ball when he was down to the very last pitch and he hit the game winning run. He was completely oblivious to the fact that he'd just been hero for the day! Memories of Tiffany's sweetness on occasion have a special place in my thoughts. Once while carrying her across the yard at a relative's house, she suddenly threw her arms around me and hugged me for no obvious reason. Another time when we were in Gatlinburg, we walked into one of the many gift shops and she immediately called out "Cookie Monster" when she saw a balloon with Cookie Monster's image on it! She was a big Cookie Monster fan back then. The little kinky-headed baby girl could really be sweet at times. On a trip to Opryland when she was four, as we made our way out of the park one night, she exclaimed "I'm tired" and so Daddy carried the little doll the rest of the way to the car. Such moments as these are truly special memories for a father filled to the "gizzard" with love for my two children.
More recollections of the children will come later but for now it is sufficient to say that those early years watching their development was both fascinating and a pleasure for a proud father. They were and are as jewels in a crown to their Mom and me. It is so true that "…children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is His reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them…" There are times when this father wishes he had more arrows.
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