Flyin' High!

I thought I'd share a picture of my son, Daniel, skydiving from this past weekend for his birthday!

I had mixed feelings about having one of my children jump out of a plane willingly, but I was the one who suggested it! Why, you say? Well, Daniel is at pivotal point in his life right now, he's about to graduate from college with his engineering degree and he's been working SO hard for so many years now, day in and day out, at a job and school and I wanted him to do something completely different and exciting to mark this year.
So I thought, skydiving! And then I thought, am I nuts?!! What if the plane goes down on the way up TO jump, what if the parachute doesn't work?!
I had a discussion about it the other day while at a doctor visit, just chatting about kids, ya' know, and my female doctor was saying also how she has a lot of fears for her children and has to struggle to let them be "free" a bit too. I totally understood what she was saying! When my kids were little I was a young mother and back then I never worried about something bad "happening" to my children. I think it came from growing up in a safe era during the 60's and 70's, when we rode out bikes everywhere and walked to school without any fears. I have noticed that now that I'm older that I have a lot more fears about what could happen. I thought maybe it was because I caption news every day, and, well, we all know about the bad news stories on the news every night!
Maybe that is part of this fear, but I thought how important too it is to encourage our young adults to sometimes take "reasonable" risks, to stretch their horizons, so I ended up pushing past myself and offering this skyride to Daniel as a birthday gift.
I'm glad I did when I see that smile on his face! Happy Birthday, Daniel! Love, Mom.