Big Things in Small Packages

    Thirty-one years ago today I sat in a hospital room in Hanford in a state of almost total stupefaction. In my hands I held what most people refer to as a "bundle of joy". Don't get me wrong, babies are a bundle of joy, but the feeling I most remember is the anxiety of knowing that party was over; it was time to grow up.
     I was in the room when she entered into this world, and I was in something of a trance. Birth is amazing. Walking down the hall way to tell her grandparents, I felt like a 100 lb. bag of feed had been placed on my shoulders. It had to have been that heavy or I would have floated off.
    We named her Haley for some reason, (Haley Mills, I suspect) it means "the game changer" in the mother tongue. I entered the hospital that night a scared teenaged boy masquerading as a twenty-seven year old man. Walking out the door that morning, I took the first real steps on my path to manhood. I had help bring something rare and wonderful into the world and was given the task of nurturing and protecting it.
    Because I wanted to do what's right, I quit my wastrel ways. Because I didn't want her to be ashamed of her father, I went back to school and got my degree.  She has changed my life more than any other factor.
    Babies don't come with instruction manuals, and  they are often dropped willy-nilly into a world where almost any moron can take one out for a test drive. I know that haven't been the best father in the world, but it isn't from a lack of trying to do what's right. More often than not, I have so many times,  not really understood what I was supposed to do.   Looking back on my life, the advice that I would give a new parent to avoid making the mistakes I have made is, "Love your children with all your heart, and let them know all the time that you do."