Happy Fourteenth, Lauren!

June 9, 2016—

To everything I wrote last year https://bit.ly/1ZBAK04—which still holds true—I would add "what a whirlwind your 13th year has been." Each June comes and goes more quickly than levels on a treadmill. Since the dawn of time, people have warned, "Enjoy every minute of it; before you know it, they're grown and gone." We listened, and we do, but nothing stops time, least of all the observance of each grain slipping through the hourglass.

God willing (every day being a gift), I guesstimate we have perhaps 214 Opening Night Movies together, then you'll kick us to the curb or fly our crazy coop and be gone to the winds.

In the meantime, I relish being passed by, for it means you are growing up, and that is good, necessary, and inevitable.

I notice now that you tromp me regularly in our conversations about movie trivia, answering at the buzzer when my mind drifts off toward, "What was that actor's name...you know...the one from...."

And you know all "the lingo," teaching me yesterday that BAE is not quite British Aerospace Electronic, as I thought it was, but is, in fact, something altogether different.

You're faster, sometimes forty steps ahead; you're taller, though not quite taller than me (yet!); you're quicker—almost always getting to the punchline or answer before your old man.

I love it. We've come a long way, kiddo, a very long way indeed.

As your 14th year begins, I pray it's the best yet.

Though often I'm right beside you, and sometimes farther behind, I am always here.

Now let's go see a show.