I remember when my first son was born it was an exciting and fearful time. Exciting just because it was our first child and fearful because of the challenge ahead in bringing him up the right way. We were both fairly young people in our twenties and both of us from fairly large families.

Yes expectations were high but as I looked forward I wondered what his life would be in another thirty years. It’s never good to try and predict an outcome when you cannot know all the variables and are in control of only one, yourself.

I am now a father and with that title come an enormous responsibility. Yes, I will have to ‘wing it’ at times since he came without and directions or warnings.

Thank God my parents were alive then as I relied on them a lot for guidance. I wanted to be the best father I could, turns out I never could have guessed how many hand towels I would go through in the first year. I never thought that kids were just that messy until I had one of my own, after tidying up one of his spills late one night I wrote this poem as a tribute to my first born and the life I pray he will live.