[blparent] blparent Digest, Vol 95, Issue 7

[Robert Shelton]

I have a story for you.  When I was 3, about 60 years ago, we moved into
this house with a great big tree in the back yard.  It had this nice fork
maybe 18 inches off the ground -- yeah, it was a climbin' tree.  Over the
next year or so, I really worked at getting a start at climbing that tree.
So, now, I'm four and a half, and I figure out how to get a leg up, so to
speak, and I start exploring that tree, vertically.  To make matters a lot
worse for my parents, who had already lost my older brother to congenatle
heart problems, I was an early riser -- I mean really early.  One of my
earliest memories is looking down from that tree (I could see back then) at
my dad's pink head (close cropped, he was a redhead).  I was well above the
roof line of this little house, up in that tree like a little bird watching
the sunrise -- I'd just gotten up and gone to the back yard while my folks
were asleep.  

So, what did my folks do?  We had all kinds of cardboard from moving boxes.
My dad, bless his heart, cushioned the area under the tree with those boxes.
He was a wise man who understood, even after losing his first born son at
the age of 3, that he could not shield me from all possible harm.  He was
raising a boy, not an African Violet.  He mitigated deadly permanent
consequences, and let me explore, take my chances.  That is a great gift for
which I will always be grateful.

-----Original Message-----
From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of blparent-request at nfbnet.org
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 9:12 AM
To: blparent at nfbnet.org
Subject: blparent Digest, Vol 95, Issue 7

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