Friday, November 21, 2014

Happy Birthday, James!

Everyone around here is getting so old.

It's an odd feeling to have nearly grown-up children still hanging around the house, even the ones who have a  plan and are making it happen. James is another year older, six months past graduation, and he's doing what he wants to be doing and making plans to continue his dream(s). He's not going the standard route of college-then-career; he's got a vision and needs to work and save up some money to make that dream come true, so he's been diligently working and putting away the money and patiently waiting for the day when he can start the ball rolling on the next phase.

We have always told our children that going to college is a choice they will have to make, and that choice depends on their vision of the future. We are not forcing them to go into college immediately after high school, and we are constantly cautioning them to be financially wise concerning debt load, but we are also reminding them that the college degrees (mostly) provide the higher incomes, if that is at all a factor in the career decisions.

Adam has a vision of being a writer; he also is passionate about language, the creation of language, the syntax and semantics of language, and could have a wonderful future in linguistics. But it seems his true passion is still writing. Not sure where he gets that from.

James has a vision of going to Germany and (possibly) studying Art in one of the art schools there. (I suspect it would be advantageous to study German first, but he doesn't have the same passion for languages as his brother.) He also wants to create videos. If you want a sample of his work, go take a look at his YouTube channel. His logo/intro is quite amusing!

Deb wants to be a mom. She loves kids. Gets that from her grandmas. And she wants to be an editor, career-wise. Again with the writing.

Mary is a bit of a wild-card, since she's still in the early stage of high school. She's got some very strong ideas of her future, but there is still a lot of room for adjustment. I admire her passion for missions, her love of music, her outgoing nature, and her endless optimism. She laughs a lot, kind of like my sister Jeanne. Even when we're driving together, she laughs, especially when she makes a minor mistake. Being in the car with her is hilarious!

But today is James's day. He rolled another year. In celebration, we went out for dinner (Thai!) and then to the Symphony to hear The Firebird. (We snagged his best friend Nathan to go along with us, at least for the food, which was a good thing since we didn't have time to run our leftovers to the car, so Nathan took them home.) The first part of the concert was a commissioned piece by Avner Dorman called "Dialogues of Love", which was in three different languages (Hebrew, German and English). It was ... interesting. Somewhat discordant, experimental. After a short intermission, which was spent trying to convince Deb that the second half wouldn't be quite so "boring", we enjoyed the non-ballet version of The Firebird. With cue cards on the video monitors to explain what was going on if we had been watching the ballet.

Then we went home and ate ice cream and opened cards and presents!

No comments: