Dean's World

Martin Shoemaker commissioned the following essay. He said,

I can’t really think of a better topic than this one: Draco, Jake, and Rosemary. Tough one for ya, I know — not. When I wrote my Dad’s eulogy, I realized that the cliché is all too true: we never seem to tell people why they’re important to us until it’s too late. As Arsenio Hall’s grandmother once told him, “You bring me my flowers while I’m alive, damn it!” It’s important to tell the people who matter to us why they matter.

There's my son Jake, soon to be turning 8, and quite the little man already. He's smart and sassy like his mother. Sadly, although I was the first to hold him and feed him in his early days, and spent lots of time with him in the early days, since our financial collapse a few years ago it's been different. I've been forced to work horrible hours at a job I hate for over four years, and forced by circumstances to accept going to school full time--which I also hate with a seething passion--just to hope to get a level of financial security and stability that Rosemary and I concluded we needed. This has forced me to spend far less time with him than I'd like, and to have far less energy when I do spend time with him. I don't think he fully understands that now, nor am I sure he ever will. But he's surely a wonderful child: bright, happy, lovable, smart as a whip, and able to beat his old man at most--not all quite yet, but most--video games. All that and an honor student. What a kid.

Little Draco--what can you say about a boy not even a year old yet except that he's a delight? He looks so much like his brother, but is very different--more giggly, more silly, a bit less imperious, a bit more subtle. It's amazing how you can see such differences in kids' personalities when they're just infants. I get far less time with Draco than I did with Jake when Jake was his age, but I hope that once the madness of this horrible schedule and this utterly infuriating time wasting I'm doing persuing a college degree will leave me, in a few more years, able to spend more time with both of them.

What can I tell you about these wonderful people who are part of my life? They're the reason I get up every day. They're the reason I haven't collapsed into an alcoholic stupor. They're my reason for working a job I hate--to keep them fed and safe. They're the reason I go to school which I hate every second of--to secure a better future for them.

If it were all to end tomorrow, the only regret I'd have is not getting this idiocy of a "college education" behind me before I got married, so I wouldn't have to putz around doing so many things I hate now and could devote more of it to them.

But they're worth it. Every bit of it.

And speaking of being worth something, what these folks are doing is important too: