Time flies

Last Fri­day evening was a sig­nif­i­cant occa­sion for our fam­ily. Our old­est son Jay, a senior, was voted “Mr. Eagle” at a big high school event. He beat 11 other con­tes­tants. (His class has roughly 500 kids.)

It was thrilling to hear them announce the new Mr. Eagle, in a room of more than 700 scream­ing kids. Well, a few were adults, though I’m not sure how many of those were scream­ing. Heather and I screamed along with the rest.

Look­ing back, I remem­bered one of the events that shaped who Jay is today. We moved to Kenya, Africa in 2005, for a two year work assign­ment. Shortly after we arrived, Heather enrolled both Jay and Ben in Ligi Ndogo (“small league”) — a soc­cer club for boys. They were the only white kids in the whole league. They learned to relate to kids of another cul­ture and to speak a lit­tle Swahili. They didn’t want to go every Sat­ur­day, but we basi­cally forced them to take part. “Eat your spinach, it’s good for you!”

The Mr. Eagle evening included answer­ing ques­tions that the con­tes­tants were not pre­pared for. Jay’s ques­tion: “What one thing would you do dif­fer­ently, if you could live your life over?” He paused and said he wished he had been able to spend more time in Africa.