IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

MEMORIES~1963

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys

Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys

One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more

And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

In the 60's we all assumed Puff The Magic Dragon was a folk song about smoking pot. The truth is that the writers, Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow, will tell you it's a fantasy based on a poem about fading into old age. If you were alive in the early '60s, as I was, you may look back on Puff with nostalgia and a different take on life.

Puff was the imaginary friend, a Dragon, of a little boy named Jackie Paper. The lyrics explain that Jackie's life was temporary and that Puff lost his roar when Jackie was gone.

I tell my children and their spouses that they better live in the present and enjoy their children every waking moment, they'll be gone in the blink of an eye.

Play with them, read to them, take them places, make them laugh, hug them when nightmares come, and never, ever be too busy for them. They are your legacy, your reason for being, nothing else matters.

I haven't practiced what I'm preaching, I've spent most of my life away from home, traveling to far off lands, away from my family.

It was left to their mother to make sure they appreciated what's important in life. Her example gave them the values necessary to attract the right partners, people with the same values. Their marriages, like mine of sixty years, reflect that.

My kids aren't blinking, their living.

I'm often told I have a beautiful family and that's true, they take after their mother, but what people don't know is that appearances are fleeting, what's important is that moral compass that points in tandem between two people, it's about principals that lead and inspire their own children into the next generation.

Don't Blink!

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