Bon Voyage My Loves

Marrying Eralda has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. I say that for many reasons, and one of those reasons is because, as a result, little Jack Tarpley has been brought into the world. I love the fact that Eralda is from Albania, and I adore her family back home. I just wish they didn't live across an ocean, on a distant continent.

Tomorrow, Eralda and Jack will board an airplane and disappear from my everyday life for almost three weeks. The last time this happened, as many of my friends will attest, I went kind of crazy. Not good crazy, either. The kind of crazy that left me prostrate on the carpet letting a dog lick my face.

I'm going to try harder this time to keep busy, to keep myself surrounded with friends and constructive things to do. In anticipation of how much I'm going to miss my son, I took him to SFA's labyrinthine arboretum. I let him ride his bike, and I followed behind him on my 42" longboard (the closest thing to a surfboard you can ride on the asphalt). We rode until we were both sweaty and tired. At one point, as he was pumping his tiny legs on his pedals, Jack looked up at me and said, "Daddy? It's a beautiful day, daddy. It's a beautiful day." I don't know how I stayed on the longboard. I could barely answer him with a steady voice. "Yeah, buddy. It's a beautiful day."