Courage

I can't really be sure Liam is my son.  I'm not suggesting Erin slept with another man on purpose.  Tall guys all kind of look the same, accidents happen.  There's just not a lot of me there.  He's not particularly tall, he's more "blond bombshell" than "black Irish", and his cocktails are absolute garbage.  I've been looking for tangible signs of "me" because looking for him to express my personality traits versus Erin's personality traits is pointless since personality-wise she and I are really similar...with one major exception. You could say she's a bit of a thrill-seeker and me not-so-much.  She's an accomplished skydiver while I couldn't submerge my head underwater until the age of 12.  Consequently I was almost brought to tears recently when Liam first demonstrated some of my more "cautious and self-preserving" ways.  Last Friday I took him to Pump It Up where for 7 bucks he gets put in a room filled with inflatable play structures for an hour and a half.  The result...pure exhaustion, it's awesome.  Incredibly they encourage parent participation so I got to skip my workout for the day (week) and flail around in a toddler-sized elbow-peeling blow-up castle. Wheeeee!!  But that's beside the point, the point is he was a total pussy!  Hooray!!  Until then I'd been feeling a little heartbroken because he'd been into some really scary shit.  Death wish dangerous stuff like sprinting into moving traffic, antagonizing big dogs, and talking to girls.  But Friday he slid down a 4 foot slide in as many minutes, he ticked off the other kids because it took him FOREVER to climb a squishy ladder, and he cried because he was in a maze where he couldn't see me for 2 seconds.  That's my boy!  It was wonderful.  I guess as the father figure I should be instilling values like courage, bravery, and self-sacrifice....but I'll leave that to his mother.