The Best Gift of All

I was lucky enough to find half price tickets from Newark to Denver, so I took advantage of them and went to visit Older Son for a long weekend for his 24th birthday. This is the first time I've been able to be with him on his birthday in six years, so it was quite a treat. We went hiking at Reservoir Ridge (turning around when a rattlesnake was sighted further up the trail!), took the tour at New Belgium Brewery (maker of my favorite beer that I can't get here in NJ), found time for a quick visit to The Loopy Ewe, and I helped Older Son make his birthday cake. He's lived on his own for a year and a half, but it's only been recently that he's started experimenting with cooking in earnest. I'm so glad that he's started making real food, and the cake was delicious!

I really enjoyed doing all of these, but the best gift of all for me was spending the day with him at school. He's a second year PhD candidate at Colorado State University, and while he was kind enough to rearrange much of his week to accommodate my visit, he still had to go in on Monday to teach his calculus class and go to his own classes. He's quite busy with teaching, his own classes, and starting some research, so this visit gave me a new appreciation for what he does on a daily basis. I attended his calculus class and was thrilled at the opportunity to see him teach. I haven't had calculus in many, many years, but I was impressed at his ability to explain logarithmic differentiation and L'Hôpital's Rule so that even I understood them. He's clearly still alive and functioning after living on his own for a year and a half, but I don't often get the chance to see him thriving as an adult in his own life. Watching him teach gave me that. He's an excellent teacher and I feel really lucky I got to see him in action. What a wonderful gift!