liam at nineteen

 

Yesterday, Liam made a mistake. It could have been a mistake with major consequences, so he was understandably upset and worked up. But he did what he needed to do to mitigate the damage, and it turned out fine in the end. It was a nice opportunity for him to remember what I think is one of the prime rules of being a good person: Everyone fucks up, and that's OK. It's what you do AFTERWARD that matters. Do you blame someone else, wallow in self-pity, or do something else destructive? Or do you take responsibility, own what you did, and set about making it right (or as right as you can)? And I am so proud of him because he consistently does the latter. 

This has been an incredible year of transition for our Liam. He's spent a full school year away at school, and now he's made the shift back home for the summer (which I remember being not so easy to do!), and soon he'll be moving into his off-campus apartment and starting his second year at Purdue. He is spending his summer working in a factory, by which I mostly mean getting an appreciation for how hard it is to work in a factory and how thankful he is that his education will be his ticket to a life spent away from the factory floor. He often sends me snapchats during the day, rating his job on a sliding scale from "this job sucks" to "this job ain't too shabby" and giving me little updates on how it's going. They never fail to make me laugh, even when I'm apologizing for not having been born into generational wealth that I can pass along to him to make his life easier.

At school, Liam has gotten way more involved in campus life than I ever was, and I'm proud of that too. He joined the Orbital Club last year, and this year he'll be a design lead for the group, which aims to build and launch a rocket. He joined the freshman honor society, and he's looking for other things that catch his interest. And he's balancing all that with challenging course loads of advanced math and engineering classes. In short, he's in his element.

He remains loyal to his lifelong group of friends, and they've gotten together regularly this summer to play D&D, have Nerf wars, and just generally goof around. He is also perfectly happy to sit around at home shooting the shit with his brothers for hours on end, all of them insulting each other, taunting each other, laughing together, and loving every minute of it. It makes my heart so happy that these fellas genuinely like each other. They are each fiercely supportive of their brothers, even if they give each other grief at every single turn.

Our Liam is fully an adult now, and he doesn't HAVE to come to us for anything. The fact that he still does tells me we've done something right with him. I can only hope that will always be the case.

Happiest of days, my boy. We love you so much, and we're so excited to be along for your ride.