fatherhood

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Dear Holly: Your 1st Week at Our New House in Alabama

8 years, 2 months.

Dear Holly,

We’ve now completed living our first week in our new home in Alabama.

Despite our house currently existing in a constant state of unpacking, with gaps in between boxes and furniture serving as a maze of makeshift hallways from room to room, you haven’t seemed to mind at all.

Maybe by the end of the summer, this will feel like our actual home.

But you said it best after our 2nd night here: “Daddy, it feels like we’re on vacation… like we’re staying in a hotel or something.”

It’s funny, because I was thinking the same thing.

 

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Jack: You’re Always Tinkering with Something

13 years, 7 months.

Dear Jack,

Our family is now halfway through our first week living in our new home in Alabama.

Looking back on the month we lived with Nonna and Papa leading up to this point, an ongoing pattern I saw while we lived with them was your tendency to be “tinkering” with projects; with Papa as your main audience member.

For example, while unpacking from the move from Tennessee, you found one of your remote control cars and decided to start replacing the wheels with a special multipurpose tool you found at a local thrift store here.

After all, Papa is known for rebuilding cars in his shop. I feel a feeling you will carry on the tradition in our family!

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Holly: Constant Access to Your Cousin Now

8 years, 2 months.

Dear Holly,

For your entire life, you were only able to see your cousin Darla once every month or two, based on us driving to Alabama from Tennessee.

Now that we have moved to Alabama and live on the same street as her, you seem to be hanging out with her every chance you get.

Not only that, the two of you talk to each other every day on an app from JusTalk. So while Mommy and I are working from home, I can hear you in your bedroom catching up with Darla each morning.

You are loving our move here!

Love,

Daddy

 

 

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Dear Jack: You Got a Perm for Your Upcoming 8th Grade School Year

13 years, 8 months.

Dear Jack,

Twenty-six years ago in the summer of 1998, I went to get a perm from Chalane McClung at Golden Shears; in preparation of my upcoming senior year at Fort Payne High School.

This week, you got a perm from Chalane McClung at Golden Shears; in preparation of your upcoming 8th grade year at Fort Payne Middle School.

It was all your idea. You have been refraining from getting a haircut for the past 3 months.

And now, you have confirmed it was totally worth it.

Not only do you get to be the cool new kid who transferred in from Tennessee, but you get to be the boy with the coolest hair!

Love,

Daddy

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Aspiring to Live Quietly… in Alabama

Back nearly a year ago when our family first started considering moving to Alabama, I was completely unaware of the concept of “living quietly”.

Now that we have transitioned here for over the past month (and are apparently moving into our own house this weekend?), it has become apparent to me that we instinctively were inspired to move from the Nashville area to my Appalachian hometown, so that we could indeed… live quietly.

Here in Alabama, a weekend feels like 5 days; compared to in Nashville, it felt like a hurried afternoon.

There is much less “running around”. There is time to think. There is room to move.

Opportunities for real conversations present themselves more organically.

This is why we moved here. Life already seems more peaceful.

So while it could easily be argued whether my own personality would, in theory, actually allow me to live a “quiet” life, I definitely appreciate the idea now; which I have since learned is not a new concept.

Instead, it’s an ancient one- that is even referenced in the Bible, in 1 Thessalonians:

“Make it your ambition to live a quiet life.”

Sure, don’t mind if I do…