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Now on to the day…
Sunday’s at Hotel Stein are always a lot of fun. Enrique, the hotel owner, always gives his cook the day off, so breakfast is always a continental type breakfast and lunch is “on the house” which always includes an outing! Since we are currently the only adopting family at the hotel, we were in for a special treat. Around 10:30 AM we hopped into Enrique’s 1955 mint condition Chevy and hit the road (I looked this car up on the internet when we got back and in it’s current condition it would easily sell for $40k to $50k dollars in the states). Since all of the cars in Cali are small imports, we got a lot of stares on the way to lunch. =)
It was about a 40 minute ride to the restaurant that he wanted to take us too, and he had told us to bring our swimming suits. It seems to be a very common thing in Cali for restaurants to include swimming pools and playgrounds for the entertainment of their guests. This restaurant also had a dance floor which Cameron was sure to take advantage of, showing off his Colombian heritage.
We always eat like royalty on these outings. We eat like Kings (Patrick’s meal)…
…like Queens (Mary Ann’s meal)…
…and of course, like little Princes (you probably figured this one out).
Before and after our meal we had time to play and swim in the pool. The edge of the swimming pool was only about six inches deep and about 4 feet wide. It made a great play area for Cameron. I kept telling him, “Cameron, that is the deep water. If you step off the edge, you are doing to go under.” He seemed to understand and kept clear of the edge.
After we got done eating lunch, Cameron wanted to go back to the pool. He had already convinced me to get in the pool with him, even though I knew I was going to stand out like a light house among all of these brown Colombians. I figured that I would probably never see them again, and I couldn’t help feeling like a bad father when all of the other dads were getting in the pool with their kids. So, in I went!
As we got back to the pool, Cameron was starting to get tired and that usually means he will start getting a little wild. His tiredness and his “know no fear” attitude really got him going and he started jumping into the deep water! Even though I was in the deep water catching him, he started jumping off to the side of me and I was really having to pay attention in order to be in the right place to stop him from going under. At one point, he jumped into the water while I was talking to Mary Ann and spent a second or two completely underwater! It scared me a bit and I pulled him up a little frustrated with his actions. I stood him up and said somewhat sternly “Cameron, you can’t jump into the deep water by yourself. If I am not there, you could go under water and not be able to get back up.” And do you know what my son said to me in that moment? “But daddy, you will always be there for me.”
Now I was standing out as a tall white american…who was crying for no apparent reason. He was right. If I have anything to do with it, I will always be there for him…and now for Cooper. My prayer is that God will give me the strength and the time to fulfill that desire. Gave me a new understanding of the passage in the Bible that tells us that God will never leave us or forsake us. Now I understand it from God’s point of view.
Man, this fatherhood thing is a trip.
