Son shows off 17 years' growth

After not seeing my son for 17 years, I received an e-mail just before Thanksgiving. He asked: "When can I visit you?"

When? Immediately, now, at once! I worked out his travel plans while he started updating his passport to get back into the United States from his longtime home in Central America.

At the airport, I looked for the 10-year-old boy I remembered. The man I found looked just like that kid whose photo I have carried in my wallet since the 1980s - only taller.

Tommy spent the next two months with us, two months that flew. During that time, I took him to visit my family, who also remembered the little boy, and we went to see Tommy's stepbrother, stepsisters, nieces and nephews. One weekend we drove to the mountains, where we encountered the only snow he remembers having seen.

I showed my boy the local sights, too. I took him to Fort Discovery, although we both were a bit old for exhibits that are generally aimed at schoolchildren. I've always learned something whenever my wife and I have taken the grandchildren there, though, and there were lots of new displays. The staffers gave us lots of attention, conducting scientific experiments just for us on a slow afternoon.

We spent a night at the hockey rink with the Augusta Lynx. Tommy lives in a tropical land and had never seen hockey, and it was a father-and-son sports night that we both had long done without.

At last week's Augusta Futurity, Tommy learned what cutting horses are, and we both got a kick out of the booths set up by vendors. We didn't need cowboy hats, boots, belt buckles and saddles, but we spent a lot of time talking with a man whose family grows jalapenos and bottles a line of salsas, jellies and chili.

I made sure to buy some hot sauce from that Texan because it was during the past two months that I got my son to experiment with spicy food. When he arrived, Tommy wouldn't even shake black pepper onto his plate. Now, I've got him on hot sauce and other delicacies. I'm so proud of my boy.

I also introduced Tommy to my favorite TV shows, and he grew especially fond of My Name Is Earl. Now that he has returned home, I will have to mail him videotapes of the rest of the season to further his cultural education.

Tommy, I found out, is better at auto mechanics, carpentry and electronics than I am, so we shopped for power tools he could take home with him.

He put his skills to work, polishing the fading paint on my wife's car. After that he looked inside and decided to clean out the vehicle. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but you'd have to be there; for a woman who prides herself on a clean house, my wife treats her car like the county landfill.

One night Tommy noticed me struggling over the daily sudoku logic puzzle, which consists of arranging numbers in a grid. He picked up the habit, and now he's better at the puzzles than I ever was.

It doesn't bother me that my own son can outperform me with an electric drill or a newspaper puzzle, though. The way I look at it, he is just a chip off the old block.

It's been only a couple of days since I saw Tommy off at the airport. The best holiday gift I ever received were his promises to come back home again soon.

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.