Christmas with the Boy

I wasn't able to get down to see my son until the day after Christmas, due to a combination of two busy schedules and a very misleading weather forecast.  It was a lovely, albeit short, visit, including way too much food at Sheryl's Restaurant across the street.  We spent a long time discussing a proposed visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Initially I thought he was just testing his father's adventurous spirit by his DRC suggestion, but he's won me over and the planning is in motion.  He had me at gorillas AND volcanoes.

On a previous visit I surprised him with a real Christmas tree, which was his first.  The little guy is still holding up pretty well.  

Here's a picture of him tearing into the presents.  Naturally, as his father, I immediately flashed back to a series to a series of wonderful and happy and elegiac memories of him doing the same thing as a boy. Our children always remain versions of Dickens's Ghost of Christmas Past, they constantly flicker and shape-shift with earlier versions of themselves.

I can't help seeing this and thinking of the boys in A Christmas Story realizing that the packages they tore open contained socks, and then throwing them over their shoulders.  Actually, he was deeply appreciative, and effusive in doling out thank yous, for all the kitchen goods for his new apartment.  Here he is, much like his father would be, intently tearing through his Lonely Planet Guide to Africa.