Originally posted on Running for Ayrie

During my second year of grad school, Nora left Perspectives where she was my boss. This was an ENORMOUS risk, but proved to me that Nora would do anything to ensure the health of her family. Anyway, once she left, I feel like our friendship developed more. Christa and I would babysit more often and we’d meet up with Nora, the boys, and Ian and Emily on a pretty regular basis. (Thanks again for hosting those great parties for the debates from the 2008 presidential election!)

My favorite memory of Ayrie happened during that year. I can’t remember if we were babysitting or just hanging out for the evening, but Ayrie and I made a makeshift bowling alley in the hallway and used boxes for pins. At one point, Ayrie gathered together four boxes and proclaimed, “It’s a rectangle!” Pretty impressive for a kid that’s only two and a half. But that wasn’t the end of it…He went on to explain WHY it was a rectangle. “One angle, two angles, three angles, four angles,” he said as he pointed to each 90-degree angle in the shape.

Now, you must be thinking that I’m a pretty big dork if this is my favorite memory of Ayrie. Yes, his grasp of geometry at such a young age was amazing, but I feel like this event epitomized Ayrie. One minute, we were hurling a play ball at a stack of boxes, only to sit down and go through a mini-lesson on rectangles. Ayrie is able to strike this amazing balance where one minute he’s playful and rowdy and then the next he’s thoughtful, intelligent, and mature beyond his years.

No doubt, this is a tribute to Nora and her incredible parenting skills. Where other parents helicopter in concern, Nora relaxes and lets Ayrie be a little boy. But then when she has Ayrie calmed down, she does things like discussing his feelings with him, something many adult children can’t even do with their adult parents.

Ayrie’s balanced personality makes him a joy to be around!