Caboose
Yesterday, Micah turned fifteen.
While I was running around trying to get a party together I thought about what he has meant to us. After five kids, we certainly weren’t planning on having another, and initially it seemed like anything but a good idea. But Micah is atypical. He’s not the cliché baby of the family, though we do tend to look out for him. Not that we even need to; he’s quite capable of taking care of himself. He does have a tendency to accurately assess our inconsistencies, which can be pretty humbling, but he doesn’t hold these against us. And, while he also has a variety of boastable talents, the most extraordinary thing about Micah is his complete lack of pettiness.
When he was a baby I remember people describing him as the caboose. At the time, it was nothing more than a cute expression for the last in line. I thought about that today, though, and it suddenly occurred to me that the caboose is what ultimately defines the shape of the train. That would be Micah.