We all get our little momemts of pride where we can...
I've been venting about Andrew quite a bit around here but today the kid made daddy proud, so I have to say it too...
We had karate class, him with a kids group, me with an adults group. The two class are separate by a wall, in a way, both teachers are back to back, with a wall that goes about 80% of the width of the two classes, meaning I can see his class through the multiple mirrors on the side wall if I want to, and he can see mine the same way. I try to not pay too much attention to his class, since I do karate also for me and I want to be the example of what to do, and practicing is what I want him to do, not stare at is dad.
Anyway, I caught glimpes of what they'd been working on today and it was about the same we'd been working on on our side, self-defense techniques. Comes the end of both our classes. On our side of the wall, after meditation, our teacher went through some general comments on what we worked on and how we should gear our practicing in the future, all the while I'm hearing my son's teacher talking and he doesn't look happy. I'm hearing stuff like "some of you didn't pay attention", "some other were just not working well at all", "I was disappointed with some of you"... At that point, I have no direct line of view to where my son is sitting, but you know what goes through my mind: "there we go again, Andrew's been fooling around more than practicing" all that based on his past in either the schoolroom, or in some karate practices, where he's been known to fool around and not always practice when asked to.
Final salute to my teacher comes, say bye to my teacher and my son comes walking my way, neither smiling, nor pouting, the kind of hard to gauge face. Walking by Stephane, Andrew's teacher, I simply something like : "so tough class today, how was Andrew?" and his answer is what made daddy proud... "Oh Andrew practiced real well today, he really wasn't one of the bad ones"
Needless to say, I was glowing
I congratulated Andrew on his good karate work ethics and told him that he couldn't have made me prouder than by simply doing what he's supposed to do, that I didn't need anything superspecial from him. I kind of got the feeling he was happy I made him the remark, but he really glowed too when we got home and I told the story to my wife, his mom. He looked so proud to have been mentioned as a good worker, was nice to see
That is all for today.
FM