Dylan Stafford

Happy Superbowl-Sunday morning.

It’s 6:13am here in Los Angeles. I have 30 minutes before I take my older boy Jackson to his cycling practice. That’s 30 minutes to pen a prayer of gratitude for yesterday with our younger boy Christian.

It’s time to renew the passports for our two sons. Five years ago, we got them passports so that we could go to Mexico for a language immersion. To get their passports five years ago, we spent a frustrating eight-hour-day waiting in the walk-up line at the post office by the airport, with our then nine-year-old and four-year-old boys. It was a long day.

This time, we knew better, right?

This time, we got organized. Two months ago my wife scheduled an appointment for last Monday at 2:00pm. An appointment! No eight-hour wait for walk-up service. We learned our lesson.

We pulled each boy out of their respective schools early. My wife and I cleared our calendars that afternoon. With our printed appointment confirmation in hand, we walked up to the post office door.

“No Passport Service at This Location” signs greeted us, tattered and taped everywhere.

“Surely that doesn’t apply to us,” I naively thought, “since we have an appointment…”

My wife came back from the window, sober. “They don’t offer that service anymore. The website still schedules appointments, but because of COVID, no one knows how to turn the website off. Our appointment isn’t real. They gave us this other piece of paper with the address of the post office that takes walk-ups. And guess what? It’s the post office by the airport, where we went five years ago.”

Really?

Ok. Surrender to win. We got in the car and drove through afternoon Los Angeles traffic, to the airport post office.

Yes, they take walk ups, Tuesday through Saturday, but they are closed today, Monday.

Reset again. Surrender again.

Fast forward. Saturday morning, the post office opens at 9:00am, so I go early. I get there at 7:30am. Not early enough. That is already too late to get a good spot in the walk-up line.

My wife and sons arrive at 9:00am. We stand outside the post office in a long line next to a chain link fence. We are in the sun. There are no restrooms. No vending machines. We take turns leaving to go get water. And later, to take the boys to the restroom at “El Pollo Loco” down the street. The whole thing is loco!

Our over-scheduled Saturday gets thrown completely off as we realize this is going to talk hours longer than we planned. Jackson misses robotics. My wife Marisa misses her appointment to get a dress altered for a nephew’s wedding in two weeks. I’m in a foul mood, mad at myself for not having remembered the lesson learned five years ago. If I had come to the post office at 6:00am instead of 7:30, I could have been first in line for us, and kept the whole plan for the day in sync.

Nobody can beat me up as good as me.

About noon, we finally go into the building, after three hours standing in the sun. We leave about 1:30pm. Six hours total at the passport service at the post office by the airport. Two hours better than five years ago. Small victory.

Later that afternoon, we all four attended Christian’s YMCA basketball game together. This is the second game of the season. Without all the passport hassle, had things gone “according to plan” then either Marisa or I would have been driving to pick up Jackson from robotics. Had things gone “according to plan” then Christian would have only had one of the three of us to witness his game.

And Christian had a game for the ages.

The game was a 19-17 victory. There was a lead change in the final minute. Parents were going crazy in the middle school gym. Christian scored three baskets, made one free throw, and caused a turnover that kept the other team from tying the game.

In the second half, his coach never took Christian out of the rotation. He stayed on the court the whole second half.

“Everybody BUT Christian!” he yelled at the time outs.

The coach is young, super-animated, very strong and graceful–very charismatic. We are lucky the YMCA has his contributions on the basketball court with our children.

Christian didn’t hear coach correctly at first and started coming off the court.

“No! Everybody But you! Stay out there Christian!” Coach boomed.

Both our sons are miracles, for different reasons.

Jackson, our older son, was a fertility miracle. After all the fancy doctors told us we would never have biological children, my wife’s body conjured up one last egg and we are blessed with Jackson. Marisa’s pregnancy with him was a statistical miracle.

Five years after Jackson, we received Christian through another miracle, the miracle of adoption. He’s our son. 100%. And, he came to us through a different path than our own biology.

We get to be parents to two miracle boys.

Both our boys are gifts. Both our boys are gifts of prayer.

God, if it be Thy will, then thank you in advance for allowing us to be a family.

Yesterday, the plan for the passports was a bust. The schedule for the whole day got thrown off.

And, from that broken plan, came the gift of all of us cheering Christian and being there for him as he gave his best effort. He got to have us all witness his moment, his mom, his dad and his big brother. We all shared about it at dinner that night, each of us recalling different moments from the game. We each got to affirm Christian and share his joy.

We share our victories and they grow larger. We share our burdens and they become more manageable. It works in families. It works in life.

Thank you God. Thank you for the chance to be married. Thank you for the chance to be married happily. Thank you for the chance to be a father. Thank you for the miracle of it all. Thank you for the gift and for the guidance.

[OK. That’s it. 6:47am now. Gotta shower and get Jackson out of bed for cycling. Apologies for typos. Thank you for reading. Happy Superbowl Sunday. –Love, Dylan]

We took our boys for their first time snow skiing today. Two hours into the mountains. Seven hours of skiing. Two hours back to the house. Sitting here now to write. Tired.

Why write?

Because it was a beautiful day, created by my wife, full of magical moments with my boys.

Because I love the mountains and nature and weather.

Because I will forget. If I don’t take these moments to write, the majesty of today will fade. So this time at the keyboard, to say thank you for a day in my life like today.

The top 10 moments:

10. That today even happened at all.

My wife Marisa came up with this idea on Friday of skiing on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday.

9. Getting to do this.

We’ve lived in California 20 years. Yet this is the first time we’ve taken advantage of the ability to ski, 91 miles from our driveway.

8. My son Jackson voting for “no lessons”.

This weekend, when Marisa told the boys about our plan to go ski, and suggested they take lessons, Jackson (14) was quick with a counter-offer: “We’ll watch YouTube videos and you all can teach us. And besides, I have physics on my side. I can calculate the coefficient of gravity…” [Jackson’s taking freshman physics, but his real major is Tik Tok. That’s his information channel.]

Christian (9) was more ambiguous, but when we learned the lessons were sold out, he went along with “mom and dad school”.

7. The energy of going on a trip.

We all woke with the excitement of going on a trip. We fed the dogs and loaded the car and were out the door by 8:22am.

6. No traffic.

5. The fun of getting the boots and the skis and the poles.

The clunky clompy walking and the swishy swishy sounds. Zippers everywhere and too many pockets. Seeing my boys experience it all for the first time.

4. The morning of “lessons” from mom and dad.

Over in the almost-flat practice area. Riding up the moving sidewalk. Gotta start somewhere. Falling. Frustrated. At one point, as I attempted to help Christian up, he ended up pulling me over. Really frustrated. “I don’t like skiing!” “That’s ok. Nobody likes skiing the first day. This is the hardest day you’ll ever have skiing.” How being a parent turns you into a coach.

3. Hamburgers for lunch.

2. The afternoon, the second go at the slopes.

After the hamburgers. The second wind. “Let’s go on the chairlift.” Sitting next to Christian on his first-ever chairlift ride, his body electric as he took it in. Then the quiet as the chair floats up and away. The views. The heights. Seeing it all through his eyes. Then looking behind me at the next chair with Jackson next to Marisa.

1. They skied!

They did it. Each in their capacity, a nine-year old and a fourteen-year old each threw their body down the mountain and into the arms of gravity. For the rest of their life, they may ski a lot, a little, or none at all, but they will never have another first day of skiing.

They were in nature. They were with their parents and each other. They were learning to use their bodies to do something totally new. They were challenged and they fell and they got up. It was raining lightly in the morning. We were all slightly wet in various places with cold spots in our clothes. It was foggy in the afternoon but we made it a day. We had a glorious day and we did it as a family.

Singing in the rain, I’m singing in the rain, What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again.

My good night prayer, Après-ski:

Thank You God for today. Thanks for the chance to be a husband. Thanks for the chance to be a father. Thanks for the snow, for the trees, for the highways that took us there and back again. Thanks for the deepness of my sleep that I anticipate tonight from my tired legs and thankful heart. Thanks for this day we remember Dr. King and his message to dream, to dream of the better world that we can make together.

Last summer, I lost a pair of prescription glasses in the Colorado river, in over 20 feet of water. I was in Texas for my thirty-year college reunion with my Aggie buddies. I lost my glasses when I tumbled ass-backwards off a kayak that I dumbly stood up in as I came up to the boat dock—a boneheaded move on my part.

My college roommate Brady fished the glasses off the bottom of the river. He had a casting net in his truck, and the confidence and determination to find my glasses. I had already assumed the glasses were gone for good and given up.

It took Brady six tries. He cast the net in a pattern, into the deep river, up against the steep cliffs as the last light faded from the day. He added a “Hail Mary” type prayer to the last, and successful, cast and he pulled out my glasses.

I could not believe he had done it. It was a miracle. I was amazed then and I’m still amazed now, six months later.

As I look forward into 2022, I’m looking for more miracles like that, small or large. Unexpected moments of grace. Undeserved. Unplanned. Much bigger than me and all my limitations. Divine doings that merit my attention and gratitude, but which will easily exist unobserved if I busily, multitasked-ly, noisily tramp roughshod over the gifts in each day.

Slow your roll Stafford. Your vibe attracts your tribe. Keep your head when all about you might be losing theirs. Surround yourself with people who want what’s best for you. Don’t waste time hating the haters, always remembering that they too are children of God, and that hurt people hurt people.

Seek ye first; That’s the game. Look with new eyes, through this new pair of glasses, baptized out of the green depths of the Colorado river. Look for the miracles. Seek and ye shall find. Will I be a fisher of what’s best in people?

Happy 2022