For AJ, and Dexter

The title is intentional.  This post is for my boys.  Everyone else, it's going to bum the heck out of you, so save it for later.  Chemo starts tonight.  I will know later if I have been placed in the research arm or not.  It's going to be hard on my heart muscle, and after I will be close to my lifetime limit for Daunorubicin.

I'm not putting it a file on my computer, to be overlooked.  I am not putting it on an email to be lost in the confusion.  There is much more to say, and given time more will be said in and put in those places.  I put it here because the message will be carried to them by all who read it as they grow up, should I not be able to.

AJ and Dexter,

Daddy loves you both more then anything in the world, save your mom.  Both of you are the greatest thing I have ever been a part of, and in each of you I see those parts.  Hopefully I will continue to shape those parts for many years to come, to bring out the ones I like but your mother hates, as she does the opposite.  Together we can make you even more, a product of us.

A few years ago, while working late fixing some computer problem that I can't even remember, I was sitting at someone else's desk while waiting for some operation to finish.  Looking around their area I started to read some "inspirational" poem mumbo jumbo they had their wall.  It struck me so deep, I was a wreck by the time I was done.  It's everywhere, and been printed to death, but in my mid twenties, it was the first time I had ever seen it.

If it helps mold you and shape you if I can not, then I have been able to achieve at least the smallest part of what I want.  I want so much more, but a butt ugly singer from England said all that needs to be said about that (Daddy can still be funny even crying).  Take the poem, not the views of the man who wrote it.

If—

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling