The eternal optimist
We have been lucky to be blessed with three sons. Our
middle son, Billy, is fondly known as "the eternal
optimist." For example, he had always been an early riser
and liked to get in our bed at 5 a.m. Although we would
admonish him to be quiet and go back to sleep, he would
say in a falsetto whisper, “It’s going to be a beautiful morning. I hear the
birds singing." When we would ask him to stop talking, he would reply, "I
not talking to you; I talking to me!”
In kindergarten, teacher asked the class to draw a tiger. Art is not his strong
suit, and his tiger came out with one eye that appeared to be shut. When
asked why the Condensed Chicken Soup for the tiger had one eye closed, he
replied, "Because he's saying, 'Here's looking at you, kid!'“
Once he got into an argument with his older brother about whether a man on
TV was bald. Billy said, "He's not bald. He's only bald when he looks at you.
When he walks away, he has lots of hair!”
Our youngest son was stricken with a serious uremic syndrome on a Tuesday
and died on the following Friday. The night after Tanner's funeral, I had laid
down beside Billy to discuss the day, as we often did. On this night, we were
lying in the dark with not much to say. Suddenly, Billy spoke, "I feel sorry
for us, but I almost feel more sorry for all those other people.” Which people
was he talking about? "The people who never knew Tanner. Weren't we
lucky to have had Tanner with us for 20 months. Just think, there are lots of
people who were never lucky enough to know him at all. We are really lucky
people.”
- Beth Dalton
Người luôn lạc quan
Chúng tôi may mắn có được ba cậu con trai tuyệt vời. Cậu con trai giữa,
Billy, có biệt danh là "Người luôn lạc quan". Cậu luôn là người thức dậy
sớm nhất, chạy vào giường bố mẹ từ lúc 5 giờ sáng. Dù chúng tôi nhắc nhở
