What I Learned From David Clapp

David’s hair smelled like hot sand when he was a sweaty toddler. He was very quiet downstairs one day. I got suspicious. I went downstairs and he had green all around his mouth, like a clown mouth. I said, “David have you been sucking on the green marker? ”  

He said, “No, Mommy.”

All I could do was laugh and take his picture.   

He was the first child.We made a lot of mistakes with him.  He floundered in college then found his footing in his faith. Then he met Jen the Wonderful. They are going to be missionaries on a college campus with the Navigators, a Christian organization that helps students get to know God. 

He’s almost 30 now. But the other day I remembered how his hair smelled and the green marker. If I think about the past the present passes me by—all the kids, original kids and added kids, around the dinner table last Sunday. If I think about the future, Jen and Dave, Jesse and Margaret, Bobby and Shayna, then I miss the joke that has just been told.

And when they talk about their lives I wonder where I was. I drove them and fed them; put did I see them or hear them? I wish I could have them back as kids for a couple ours just to watch them. 

 In spite of all the mistakes in parenting and my majoring in the minors like food and clothes, when I needed to listen and read to them more, my kids grew up into amazing people. Even the later kids like Rachel who joined our family at 21, and Shayna who joined at 16, and Heather and Ayden are pride- producing.

I don’t know how they got that way.

 I’m not fishing for a mothering complement. I’m thanking God. 

I sat at the table Sunday and looked at Dave and the rest. I thought it was a privilege to know such great adults.  And I still remember what they looked like when I met them all the first time.