Today (Friday) is Ramy's birthday. I wish that in my little collage of pictures above that I could show you all two of my favorite pictures of Ramy, but I don't have scanned images of them. One of them is a picture of him when he and his family first arrived in the United States. He is just about the tiniest and cutest little thing you've ever seen. My other favorite is on our refrigerator and people tend to not believe that it's Ramy when they see it. It was taken in the 80s, and he is a teenager practicing his Bruce Lee imitation and looking quite buff and sporting an odd looking mustache. Of course, when that picture was taken, I was still a toddler, a fact which I like to bring up to him all the time to make him feel like a dirty old man. I just wish there were more pics of him during his baby and toddler year, because I'd love to compare those pics to ones of Rebecca.
I was going to write a really mushy post about how wonderful he is and how much I love him, but I know that it would completely mortify him for me to put that stuff on here. In fact, even though we're celebrating his birthday with some of his best friends this weekend, they aren't allowed to even know that it is his birthday we're celebrating. They just think we're getting together. It would be a travesty for him to be the center of attention (lordy, we're so different!), and the worst possible scenario would be if they sang Happy Birthday to him. But I'll just say that there's something pretty telling about the fact that his birthday is a Holy Day in the Catholic Church. Now God wouldn't have just regular ordinary guys to be born on a Holy Day, now would He?
Ramy's dad had this poem, and it has always been really special to Ramy and it is one of the few sentimental things that he has kept for years. There's no one Ramy has looked up to more than his dad (whose birthday was this past Monday), and I know his dad believed that Ramy fulfilled all the the words of this poem.
Build Me a Son
Written by General Douglas A. MacArthur
Build me a son, O Lord,
who will be strong enough to know when he is weak,
and brave enough to face him self when he is afraid;
one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat,
and humble and gentle in victory.
Build me a son whose wishbone will not be
where his backbone should be;
a son who will know Thee- and that
to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.
Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort,
but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge.
Here, let him learn to stand up in the storm;
here, let him team compassion for those who fall.
Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goals will be high;
a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men;
one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep;
one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.
And after all these things are his,
add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor,
so that he may always be serious,
yet never take himself too seriously.
Give him humility, so that he may always remember
the simplicity of true greatness,
the open mind of true wisdom,
the meekness of true strength.
Then I, his father, will dare to whisper,
"I have not lived in vain."
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