We are on the west coast visiting our daughter and her husband Jesse. I love to visit this part of the country. It is so beautiful, lush and green. To reach their home you fly into Portland then drive through the Coast Range out to the ocean. Holly and Jesse live on highway 101 that runs right up the west coast.
The coffee is good out here and every day I try to get out and hike along the ocean. This morning I didn’t get out early. Our grandson Aiden Redemption is just starting to talk. He wakes up and you can hear his little voice…
“Dad…? Dad…?”
I steal in to get him out of his crib.
I slowly open the door and greet him. He smiles and then his little face turns into a frown and he looks over my shoulder to find his dad.
He doesn’t know that Dad flew to Dubai through Amsterdam last night and he is a world away right now.
Yesterday when he left Aiden went running down the drive after him with his little short staccato steps. Dad stopped the car and came back to kneel down and give him a last lingering hug and kiss. Aiden didn’t know he would be gone for a week.
This morning I got him from his crib and put him down. He scampered out of his room with little short, quick steps to explore the house and find his dad calling “Dad? Dad?.”
After discovering his Dad is not home, only then is he willing the socialize with the rest of us.
And there again that little voice that teaches me of God says to a deep place in my soul, “Do you long for me like that first thing every morning?”
Ken Pierpont
Gearhart, Oregon
May 5, 2018
