My son David

My son David was a good kid.  He was a good kid when he let me haul him around Europe when he was 13-years-old.  In 2012 he has become a good man.

On July 16, David will be 47.  He is a computer geek and designs traffic control for cities throughout the U.S.  Watching television during some disaster I saw the room with many  computer screens displaying highways in Atlanta.  When I commented to David on how complicated it looked, he said, “I’ve been in that room many times.  What you don’t see is all the equipment in the room behind that one.” 

He’s a clever guy, but being smart does not make you a good person.  David is a devoted father, taking the children to school and usually cooking supper in the evening.  On weekends he takes Adam, 12, and Alli, 10, with him to the Farmer’s Market, They bicycle to the parks near their Irvine home.  About once a month they go family camping.

David’s family lives in California.  Several times a year he flies into Dallas for a weekend with his Mom.  He takes me to fine restaurants, updates my computer, and does any chores I need help with.  Last time he was here he bought a new vacuum and cleaned the carpet in my apartment, moving furniture, getting into all the corners and making sure to get the lint along the baseboards.  

As David took charge, I remembered the young boy who got excited about the electronic map in the Paris subway.  As a 13-year-old, without protest, he let his Mom drag him around all over Western Europe.  In return, while indulging myself in all the places I wanted to see, I also tried to find things to do that would amuse him.  As we rattled around Germany, for every church we went to, I found a castle for David to explore. 

At 13 David was interested in all things military.  In Paris we went to Les Invalides, France’s premier miliary museum.  We spent one whole day there.  It will take two more blogs to tell all that we saw.  It ended with my encounter with a German.