About A Boy

I write an awful lot about our girls and I would never want you to think I favor them over our wonderful son. We love them all the same ~ which is completely! Chris is our middle child and is sandwiched between our two girls. All the kids are three years apart in age. Chris was born in 1975 and I think the Lord sent us the best little boy possible as we had some rough roads ahead right after he was born.

Within three months of his birth, we lost Jim's brother and only sibling (age 26) in a terrible motorcycle accident and moved into the first home we ever purchased within just a few weeks. To say it was a stressful time would be grossly understated. Talk about putting us in a tailspin, that was the year if ever there was one.

The Lord sent us this beautiful little boy and somehow we got through the days and weeks of that first year, largely because he was such an angel. Chris has always been the best of sons. Honestly, he doesn't have an ounce of guile in him. He is kind, funny, has a winning smile and is so good-natured and was always obedient. He is a person who just seems to be so comfortable being himself. I would get so frustrated with his messy room and say very sternly, "Christopher Andrew, get in that room right this minute and get it picked up!" He would take the last bit of wind out of my sails with a good-natured..."OK, Momma!"

It was interesting raising one boy and two girls. The girls had their hormonal ups and downs but Chris just seemed to glide through things...always landing sunny side up. He is one of those people, as an adult, that works so incredibly hard but makes life look easy. His life has a flow to it that I truly envy and admire. He is calm and centered. Chris has never had self-esteem problems...he views himself as no better and or worse than anyone else. He lives a simple life and doesn't make himself crazy second guessing himself. If only that quality could be bottled and sold to the females on the planet.

Chris is our child that dug the deepest roots. He never wanted to leave home and our house and the community of friends he had established from his youngest years. He would come unglued if we even looked at houses in other places which we loved to do, especially in San Francisco. He wanted to stay put, after all this was HOME!

When he was a teenager he would often invite me into his room just to talk. He liked to run things by me and many a night we talked long and late about friends he was concerned about because they were on a wrong path. Sometimes it would be about his life in general and his future plans. He sought our advise often. He was always very compassionate about kids that really struggled with their parents and other issues. His best friend was Josh, and he had Cystic Fibrosis and died in his mid-twenties. Chris spent countless hours with Josh as the hospital playing Star Wars when they were little and just hanging out as they grew up.

He is a really musical guy and loved singing for me and playing his guitar. To this this day I miss those times so much. I remember him singing all kinds of versions of Rocky Raccoon to me and changing the lyrics as he went along just to make me laugh. He was an inventor in embryo, even then. He was a singer and performer from junior high on and learned to play the piano on his own right before his mission to South America. He was able to do this by transferring what he knew on the guitar and one day just sat down and started playing. It was mind-blowing and he used it through out his mission in most church meetings.


I loved to watch him learn from his Dad a lot of the important" guy things" and I still enjoy watching them work on projects together. He learned to play baseball and do his scouting projects to get his Eagle Scout Award with his Dad's interest and help. He learned to be a wonderful husband and father by following his Dad's good example. And just like his Dad he can fix anything. Right now he is remodeling their basement (with Missy's help) in his spare time. They has just finished digging out the window wells for the new windows in Connor's new bedroom.
He is a spiritual guy and prayed his way into BYU with a B+average when straight A's were preferred. Everyday he'd call me at lunch time to see if his acceptance letter had come in the mail yet. If not, he just kept tirelessly petitioning the Lord. He prayed his heart out and got in! He signed up for summer semester so he literally left home the night he graduated from High School. We picked him up at 3:30 am from Grad Night to get him to Utah the next day in time for his college orientation.

Since that time he has received his BS, MA, and a PhD in mechanical engineering. He served a two year mission for Jesus Christ in Brazil and since high school has only lived at home for four months after his mission until the next semester began.

Had I known on Grad Night it was not ever going to be the same after he left home, I would have cried a lot more and harder for the missing of such a fine boy! Somewhere during all of that time he grew into a brilliant man. I could keep up with my smart boy, but the brilliant man has been a lot harder. I tried to read his Master's thesis and after the first two paragraphs had no remote conception of what he was talking about. Engineering and inventions of these tiny mechanical devices somehow eludes me. Fortunately, his Dad gets that sort of technical stuff and could follow along and at least ask intelligent questions. As for me...not really. I like to talk to him about the other aspects of his life.


While Chris was in school he worked for an engineering firm in Utah and even went to live and work China for 18 months for them, after getting his doctorate in NY. The CEO wanted him to become a full partner with him but Chris decided to go to the academic side of engineering so he could do research and teach.
He is such a people person so that was a great choice for him. Being an educator has served him well for the last four year at the University. He has been married to Melissa for almost 13 years and they have three sons and one daughter. They have a wonderful happy little family. He serves as scout master in the church and travels a lot for the University and presents papers, gives lectures and gets grants for research, etc. along with teaching classes.

So the reason I am telling you all this, is not for his benefit...he does not read the blog...as he has no time. But it is to let you know that I don't write about him as much because I don't get that much time with him. The truth is I miss him terribly but, I just try to make the best of it as I know he is doing exactly what he should be doing. He is independent, spiritual, happy in his marriage and a wonderful father. He is doing what we raised him to do and everything we wanted him to do. But the truth is that his successes have come because of who he is. He just came that way. We were blessed. And we are so very proud of all his goodness and his accomplishments in setting and reaching his goals.

He has lived 17 of his 35 years away from us and that is so hard for me. He is so good to call us and he treats me like a queen when we are together and always has. He is a best friend to both Jim and to me. I realize as I have been writing this how very much I miss him and those special times we use to have just talking and hanging out when he never wanted to even think about leaving home.


And look at him now. I am still surprised when I see him and he is a MAN. In my mind's eye he is still that 18 year old boy going off into his future, none of us knowing it was the end of an era. And suddenly I am feeling emotional and there are tears running down my cheeks.

When he was a little boy he was sometimes sad that he didn't have a brother to play with. I always told him it was because we could never love another little boy as much as we loved him. I was mostly trying to appease and comfort my little, lonely boy, but in reality I was telling him the absolute truth. The extent of which I barely knew myself at that time.