More Ours In The Day

Vacation time. That means that I try to lay in bed for an extra few minutes, while my son tries to get up a few minutes earlier (or an hour or two earlier). I was trying to remember when it becomes more important to look at the inside of your eyelids than Cartoon Network. My seventeen year old niece has passed that mark. Teenagers have an amazing capacity for sleep. Parents would like to aspire to such a talent. I lay there in bed this morning with the sounds of "Tom and Jerry" wafting up the stairs. I closed my eyes a little bit tighter, and made conscious efforts to relax. "Settle down there, big fella," I tell myself in a comforting way, "He'll be fine for hours. He knows how to use the remote."
Then the truth returns: I want to be up and sharing the experience. Not necessarily the cartoons, unless they were Warner Brothers, but the empty chunks of time that hang around the edges of vacation days. There are plenty of scheduled or suggested activities for the rest of the day, but right now there's only breakfast, television, a morning paper, and a couple of hours before the excitement begins.
My life is hardly the "Cat's in the Cradle" version from the Harry Chapin song. I have lots of time to connect with my son, and we share all kinds of important events and experiences. During the school year, my wife and I sometimes need a crane, or paramedics to haul my son out of bed to get him ready to go to school. It's on the weekends that he shows off his amazing stamina for eighteen hour days, filled with amusements. I know that the day is coming soon when he'll be the one snoring in the other room as I get up to go and mow the lawn, or write my blog. But right now he's sitting on the stairs, reading a "Dennis the Menace" comic book. I want to be part of that.