Hint: Not me.

I have four children (Jaymie, Jazmyn, Araya and Stephen), two surrogate children (Jessica and Billy) and one grand-daughter (Gabryale). I wear bifocals, have arthritis and more gray hair on my chin than on the top of my head. And yet the one thing that really makes me feel old is a conversation I had with my mother where she told me that she might be retiring next year. I don’t know why it makes me feel old, but it does.

Out of all my nieces and nephews, I am probably closest with Jessica. She is around the same age as Jazmyn and we have always tried to include her in as much stuff as we could. So she has always been more like another daughter than a niece. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see or talk to her as much as I would like, but she knows her Uncle Derek loves her.

When we first go there, Stephen didn’t want to do anything except sit next to me. That was until the pizza came. He ate, the kids opened presents and he ended up having a pretty good day.

There was really only one present he wanted and as you can see he got it. Not to say that he didn’t appreciate getting the other gifts, but it was very obvious which one was his favorite.

I think it is a little weird that he is so into Mario because I remember playing Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600 with my cousins. For some reason, he doesn’t think that Mario has been around for so long.

Gabryale also attended the party and spent some time with her granddad. Every time I put my phone down, she would pick it up and hand it to me. So I took a picture.

I tried a couple of times to get her to smile, but she wasn’t having any of that.

Chances are really good that he will never see this post or even this blog, but a lot of the things that I do and say about him aren’t for his ears, they are to proclaim my love for him to the rest of the world. He is my youngest, but I have never felt a responsibility for the girls the way that I feel for him. Their mothers have to teach them how to be a woman in this world, I cannot help them with that no matter how much I research or read up on the subject.

I have a duty to teach Stephen how to be the best man I can teach him to be. I don’t know how he’ll turn out or if the job I’m doing is being done right, but I know it is my responsibility, duty and honor to do it. He will never know how much I love him, but I hope that the rest of the world never doubts it for an instant.

Thanks to everyone who wished me well.

Without missing a beat, turning her head to look at me or even cracking a smile, she said “What’s that? One of those record things you’re always going on about?” She totally stopped me in my tracks, I took my eyes off the road and just said “Shut up.” That’s when the smile came out.

And as you can tell from the picture with my granddaughter Gabryale, Jaymie has a great smile.

OK, I am a pretty bad grandfather. My first (and so far only) grandchild had her 1st birthday on March 2, 2009. Unfortunately, last year when I added her birthday to my various calendars, I put down March 3. So not only was a day off, but then I turn around and forgot to put a blog post about it.

Oh well, at least she doesn’t know yet.