Dads Love Their Sons- Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker Edition Part II

A lot can happen in six years.

The kid who believed in the Force and talked about becoming a Jedi like his father before him doesn’t do that anymore. Now he tells me about how he and his friends are worried about Disney screwing up Star Wars.

He says he knows now that I fooled him with some tricks into believing I could use The Force and that I can’t do that any more because he is not young and dumb.

I don’t mind it, growing up can be a very cool thing. Some of the things we can do together now are more fun than the stuff we did back then.

Don’t get me wrong there has never been a time where I didn’t look forward to playing with my kids but I am not going to lie and say I loved all of the games because some weren’t much fun.

But then again I do miss some of the the bits and pieces of childhood. We can’t talk about play dates because they hang out now and we have reached a place where I am not always cool to have around.

That is cool with me too because I remember going through it. Sometimes it makes me roll my eyes, but that is ok I am not worried about trying to be the cool dad.

I don’t do things to be that guy. I am who I am and I like that guy. Not going to be his friend until he is much older, because until your kids reach a certain age you need to be the parent and not be the friend– but I digress.

Six Years From Now

Six years from now he’ll be almost twenty and in the midst of college. Sometimes I wonder what he’ll look like then, where he’ll go to school and what he’ll be doing.

Most of the time I don’t focus on it because it will come soon enough. I am interested in focusing on the present and enjoying these moments as best I can.

But between you and me I want to try and stop the clock for a bit and not just because I can still run faster, jump higher and out wrestle him either.

I am just not ready to see this part of life change. Ultimately it doesn’t matter because life doesn’t care and time won’t wait so I guess I’ll just roll with whatever comes along same as always.

Still I might read the original post (see below) and remember the boy who was for just a moment.

My son is at a great age. He is old enough to watch some of the cooler movies and still young enough to believe in the magic. 

During the past couple of weeks he and I watched the original Star Wars trilogy. We had great fun talking about the characters and what happened. While we watched I made a point to periodically check out the look on his face. I watched his eyes get wide and listened to him gasp and or cheer as warranted by the scene.

But he really caught me off guard with his reaction to one particular scene during Return of the Jedi. It is in the video just below this. If you watch you’ll see the fight between Luke and Darth Vader followed by the Emperor’s attempt to kill Luke.

As the Emperor sends lightning shooting into Luke’s body there is a moment where Luke screams “Father, please!” At that moment my son grabbed my hand and said he won’t die, his dad will save him.

I sat in silence. I wanted to let him learn what happened for himself. I watched his reaction as he sat up straight and his eyes got wider. Moments later he learned that he was right in his assessment of what would happen.

With a big smile on his face he hugged and kissed me and said “I know that you’d save me too.”

If you would have seen my face you would have seen a big stupid grin. “Of course I would,” I said.

Then that little boy of mine burst my bubble. “You know, you do share something in common with Darth Vader.”

“Oh really, what is it.”

“When you sleep you sound just like him.”