Eva's favorite blue-eyed boy but he's a man now...Alan | Senior

We trampled over dirt and grass and broke branches with our feet and faced the clouds and the coming storm. I watched as he skipped rocks and stood under the trees and laughed at his mom beside me. I am seeing him in my mind's eye. Watching his shuffle his feet as I get the angle I'm looking for. He probably wonders when these senior pictures will be finished. But he doesn't act like it.

His mom grins ear to ear as she watches everything he does. That boy that has now become a man. He's her "favorite blue-eyed boy" she tells me. Her "favorite brown-eyed boy" already off at college finishing another year, working hard during the summer to pay his bills.

Alan's her baby. He's a man now, but he'll always be her baby.

I'm not your mama, Alan, but I am so proud to see who you have become. You have faced some great trials and come through better than anyone could expect. You've traveled the World to give to others what they did not know. Christ's love burns bright in your heart. May it always.

"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"
Rudyard Kipling, If