My twins went tubing behind a speed boat. Lucky for me a friend who is handy with lenses caught the moment. I was not there, so the photo vicariously includes me in the spray. 

 

I never allowed myself to be yanked behind a ninety horsepower machine. Even the thought makes me grip the arms of my chair. Fortunately unreasonable fears are not genetic and my kids have experienced all manner of enterprises that I never will. They climb mountains. Travel with abandon. Jump out of airplanes. Pilot airplanes. Visit the Masai tribe, and hover above volcanoes in a helicopter. 

 

There are other things my kids do better than me. In searching through yellowing albums for pictures to include in the screen saver my son set up I was struck by how terrible my photography skills were. And are. Not that I have paid for developing film since the nineties. But I sure shelled out cash for duplicate sets of thirty six snapshots of my first four kids as if they were worthy of a frame. Mostly they aren't.

 

My kids know how to use a camera, and I am the grateful beneficiary. It is not what I expected, to have my kids surpass me. Our daughter who is a self proclaimed geek bought her dad a clock, whose numbers are equations. I can solve precisely none of them.

 

10mod7

3!

4P2

1/cos60 

 

I would bore you with the rest but they include digits that even my keyboard is not privy to.

 

While I had adjusted to the reality that Hosanna, who graduated at the top of her class from Yale with an MBA, knew these numbers, the twins explained them to me too. Patiently. No snarky insinuation that their mother should understand these things. 

 

But then again maybe it should be this way. The children who follow us on the road speed up even as we slow down. 

 

Then I have the pleasure of watching from behind.