Just now, Samiam's song "Sky Flying By" really made a heck of alot of sense...

Everyday.

Every single day, Laura and I get to experience this wonder. This joy. This ever-exhausting, yet exhilirating, journey navigating waters tumultuous then calm then stormy again seems to cycle on and on and on...

But, it's never overwhelming. It's never something that can ever push us "over the edge." It's never an experience that, in the long term, makes either of us give up and try to absolve ourselves of these responsibilities. To foresake the promises we explicitly made to these little people we decided to bring into this world as a product of our love and affection for one another - to break those vows to them is unfathomable.

Yet it happens. It's happened to millions of people all over the world. It's happened to me. It's happened to my brother, my sister...and I will never understand it.

I know. It gets tough. It feels like there is no possible way you can possibly bend and twist and strain the limits of your sanity, of your will, another fraction of an inch, because you're bound to snap. You're bound to break, and with that fracture, bring everything down with you. You get damn close. Maybe I've not REALLY gotten that far. Maybe I only THINK I've seen the precipice of that cliff, and am arrogantly questioning how anyone could ever go over - I can accept that.

How, though, can anyone ever put out of their mind the look in their childrens' eyes when they actually learn something. The light that flickers deep in their pupils when knowledge crystallizes behind those eyes. When understanding is finally achieved - how can the thrill that accompanies that moment ever be so far out of your mind as to not rescue you from that edge? To put up the mental blockade that forces you to crash into a wall, knocking reality and some semblance of sense back into your mind, and force you to realize that there are so many more absolutely phenomenal moments ahead that propelling yourself into that reckless abandon would mean an instantaneous end to any and all of those joys; how can that be so drowned out by your own self-absorption?

I hope, every minute of every day, that this 30,000 foot view of that state-of-mind is as close as I'll ever get.

Thank you, boys. Thank you, Laura. Thank you Ryan and Miss and Sara and Ethan and Dylan and all my Kiefer family and the Campbells I have left in this world. Thank you all for making my life the wonder it is to live.

(K)