FROM MY JOURNAL:
~Randy Reynolds
5-16-85 (Thursday)
5-16-85 (Thursday)
I took Ryan and his Papa Huey to the Lake
D’Arbonne
Tonight we went to the bridge over Bayou DeSiard. And he and I
caught two tiny fish apiece. We stayed two hours.
We rented a rowboat and fished among the cypress trees on Bayou
DeSiard. Ryan caught six fish and I caught one. He was very happy about
it—though not very gracious in victory! He sure rubbed it in! We stayed 5
hours. He wore his orange hat and an old orange lifejacket. His face got
blistered. He is so good with a rod and reel it seems as if he’s been doing
this for years.
Ryan gets so wrapped up in things! He watched a fishing show on TV
today and rearranged our tackle box, in order to compare our lures to what he
was seeing on TV.
He has enormous powers of concentration for a 6-year-old. He knew
his alphabet at age one. He couldn’t recite it, but he could identify every
letter correctly.
He memorized our insect picture-book at age one, learned to swim at one, became interested in
dinosaurs at two and could name most of them on sight when he was still in
kindergarten. I got him to do a radio commercial with me in which he had to
pronounce Pachylacephalosaurus and he got it on the first take.
I looked at Ryan a long time today and it was a revelation. I
think of him as a certain size, a certain age, and then he walks in the room
and he’s bigger than the image that was in my mind a moment before. The speed
of his growth takes my breath away--it's almost like he grew in the last few
seconds. I remember having the same feelings about Kerri and Kristi. They grow so fast. They’ll soon be grown and gone.
