"Traditions"
(Excerpted from To A Child. . . Love Is Spelled T.I.M.E.)
By Lance Wubbels

I

In the faint light of the attic, an old man, tall and stooped, bent his great frame
and made his way to a stack of boxes that sat near one of the little half-windows.

Brushing aside a wisp of cobwebs, he tilted the top box toward the light and
began to carefully lift out one old photograph album after another. Eyes once
bright but now dim searched longingly for the source that had drawn him here.

It began with the fond recollection of the love of his life, long gone, and somewhere
in these albums was a photo of her he hoped to rediscover.

Silent as a mouse, he patiently opened the long-buried treasures and soon
was lost in a sea of memories. Although his world had not stopped spinning
when his wife left it, the past was more alive in his heart than his present
aloneness.

Setting aside one of the dusty albums, he pulled from the box what appeared
to be a journal from his grown son's childhood. He could not recall ever having
seen it before, or that his son had ever kept a journal. Why did Elizabeth always
save the children's old junk? he wondered, shaking his white head.

Opening the yellowed pages, he glanced over a short entry, and his lips curved
in an unconscious smile. Even his eyes brightened as he read the words that
spoke clear and sweet to his soul.

It was the voice of the little boy who had grown up far too fast in this very house,
and whose voice had grown fainter and fainter over the years. In the utter silence
of the attic, the words of a guileless six-year-old worked their magic and carried
the old man back to a time almost totally forgotten.

Entry after entry stirred a sentimental hunger in his heart like the longing a
gardener feels in the winter for the fragrance of spring flowers. But it was
accompanied by the painful memory that his son's simple recollections
of those days were far different from his own. But how different?

Reminded that he had kept a daily journal of his business activities over the
years, he closed his son's journal and turned to leave, having forgotten the
cherished photo that originally triggered his search.

Hunched over to keep from bumping his head on the rafters, the old man
stepped to the wooden stairway and made his descent, then headed down
a carpeted stairway that led to the den.

Opening a glass cabinet door, he reached in and pulled out an old business
journal. Turning, he sat down at his desk and placed the two journals beside
each other.

His was leather bound and engraved neatly with his name in gold, while his
son's was tattered and the name "Jimmy" had been nearly scuffed from its
surface. He ran a long skinny finger over the letters, as though he could
restore what had been worn away with time and use.

As he opened his journal, the old man's eyes fell upon an inscription that
stood out because it was so brief in comparison to other days. In his own
neat handwriting were these words:

Wasted the whole day fishing with Jimmy. Didn't catch a thing.

With a deep sigh and a shaking hand, he took Jimmy's journal and found
the boy's entry for the same day, June 4. Large scrawling letters pressed
deeply in the paper read:

Went fishing with my dad. Best day of my life.

You may have heard it before but it bears repeating. Someone once said,
"I've never known anyone who, on their deathbed said.I wish I had spent
more time at the office." Our Dash is a fleeting moment in time, and what
we do with it is up to us.

The quote on the Priorities print from Successories says it all:

"A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was,
the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove.but, the world may
be different because I was important in the life of a child."
It is reprinted with permission of the publisher, Simple Truths, LLC.,
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