A Young, but Elevated Perspective

Timmy Moynihan and Dimitry Supreme (LCS ‘11), work diligently to chop down a coconut palm root ball that was in the path of another French drain installation.

We dug a new hole to install another French drain. The last one is working so well that we felt inspired. I am proud to say that the MVP of this hole was my son, Timmy. Timmy’s first day at LCS was at 5 weeks of age. Since he is now 6' 1.5" and has grown most of those additional 62.5 inches at LCS, it is not a stretch to say that he has grown up here—a lot!  This past weekend presented a right of a passage. He was given the task of chopping the coconut palm root ball in the hole down to size. Mentored by Dimitry Supreme, LCS grad 2011, and second year junior staff, he completed the task quickly—so quickly that we had put the root ball back in the hole to catch the picture of them hoisting it out. 

Here is the story as Timmy tells it:

When it rains it pours in Haiti. I mean, it really pours. Wherever water pools, mosquitoes swarm to it. And, the water becomes a breeding ground for more mosquitoes. Not only are mosquitoes annoying—and they are really annoying—they carry serious diseases. On top of that, stagnant water makes the school look dirty and gets in the way of my basketball games. So we really needed to dig drains to clear the rainwater from the main basketball court.

Since there would be so much water going into it, the drain had to be enormous. We started digging at 7 AM.  Soon, we found an old coconut tree trunk. To make the hole large enough, it had to be removed. After cutting through its roots, we used a rope to tie the tree trunk to a truck, but the trunk was too heavy.

My dad turned to his secret weapon: his oldest son, Robert. But Robert wasn’t there, so he turned to his second secret weapon: his second son. Let’s just say I filled Robert’s shoes pretty well. Both figuratively and literally, since I was wearing his old shoes. My friend Dimitry and I cut away at the tree trunk so we could reduce its size to the weight of a refrigerator. Or at least that’s what it felt like when Dimitry and I lifted it out of the hole.

After we finished for the day, I sat in the rocking chair in the living room, all showered up and sipping a cold Coca-Cola. I thought to myself that these moments of triumph, big and small, will be the moments of my life that I remember most. These moments will be burned in my memory, not because I worked so hard, but because of the success. Life will always have its huge holes, and I will be able to look back on these moments of triumph and tell myself that no matter how much work there is to be done, it will be worth doing and I will succeed.