Why Life Is Beautiful and Hard and The Two Are Impossibly Caught Up In One Another

I have these two pictures in my office.  Cameron with me and Eliza with me.  They were Father's Day gifts in 2002.  In the frame with each is a list of reasons why "I love daddy...".  Julie undoubtedly asked them to list some things then she typed them up and put the pictures together and they are the best Father's Day present in the history of Father's Day presents.  They say things like "he pushes me on the swing" (Eliza) and the one that has always made me misty every single time I read it, "he never forgets me" (Cameron).
I have always guessed the "he never forgets me" came from a consideration of the fact that I have usually been the one who has had the flexibility of schedule to do the majority of the dropping off and picking up for school over the years.  So when the young Cameron would come out of pre-school or elementary school he couldn't recall dad just not coming to get him.
If you could put one thing in your child's head about you I think it would be the idea that whatever happens, whenever it happens, whatever it happens to be, that you, the parent, would always have them on your mind.  You would never forget them.  And, as I've thought about it, I think this is why Cameron's leaving for school at Western Kentucky University to start his college career this past Thursday has been so hard.
Of course I will miss him.  I will miss him every time I walk by his room.  Every time I go to the grocery and don't need to pick up a few Three Cheese Ziti frozen dinners because he goes through them like a seventeen year-old through frozen dinners.  Every time I watch some political pundit say some dumb thing on tv and file it away to tell Cameron later.  Every time I hear a new song and want to run the song or the band by Cameron because he's one of the two or three people in the world who have musical sensibilities in alignment with my own.  Every time I walk past a couch that doesn't have a kid sprawled on it munching on popcorn and watching the Real Housewives of somewhere.  So most every second of every day I guess is where I'm headed with this.
But what the picture got me to thinking was this:  the thing that I will miss most is the need to be remembered.  There isn't anymore picking up to do.  Not in the day to day, boring, school gets out at 2:00 p.m. sort of way.  Soccer practice ends at 6:00 p.m. today sort of way.  Come get me when I call from my friends house sort of way.  My schedule is more my own.  And what my heart knows is that given the choice between a schedule more my own and needing to remember, I so much prefer needing to remember.  Because I won't forget.  I promise you, I won't forget.

I am so thankful for the years when "he never forgets" was an important part of Cameron's world and my place in it.  I'd say more, but Eliza just let me know that she's awake and hungry - what am I going to do about it?  In this beautiful and hard life thing, it is so nice to be needed.  I've gotta go find a fourteen year-old breakfast.