Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to make today worth remembering.– The Music Man

If you live long enough, you’re going to look back and say “If I had only…” about something.  Worse, you might say “If only I hadn’t…”.

I was having one of those days this morning.  I was sore all over, my head hurt, and I had to get up and go to work.  Irish Woman growled at me, I growled back.  What can I say? It’s love.  Girlie Bear was up and almost out the door before I got out of bed, and most of what she said to me was in reference to the pot of coffee I had promised to have ready to go this morning as a treat, but forgot to get together last night before I went to bed.  Boo, being a six year old boy, was bouncing from pillar to post because it’s four days and a wake up to summer vacation and today was “Donuts With Dad”, followed by numbers and stories, then an afternoon of playing in sprinklers and water slides.

Through it all, I was just trying to figure out which body part my socks go on and where in the name of all that is holy did I put my work boots?  At some point, a voice in my head asked how I got here.  When I was younger, I wanted to be a heart breaker and a world shaker.  I drove multi-ton war machines, visited distant lands, and got to play with whiz-bang technology the day after I got to play with high explosives.  Now, I’m a fat, balding schlub who was fumbling to tie his shoes before coffee.

My attitude didn’t improve much on the way to Boo’s school, but I behaved myself and chatted with the other dads before being shown into the school cafeteria.  There I found my place marked with a flowerpot hand painted by my youngest son, along with a hand-made Father’s Day card.  After a few moments, the kids came down and joined us, and a good time was had by all.

And that’s when I felt ashamed to regret the life I have.

If I had changed one decision in the last 43 years, I would have missed out on my son grabbing me by the ears, bonking me in the forehead with his, and saying “I love you, Daddy” this morning.  One zig instead of a zag, and I would have missed out on Irish Woman flirting with me when I went back to the house to drop off Boo’s flowerpot and card.  If I’d skipped out on the party where I met my first wife, as I fantasized about this morning, I never would have heard Girlie Bear say “You’re my favorite father” this morning.

All my yesterdays led to today.  None of the adventures I might have had if I had just done one or two things different would have been worth losing these moments.