Introduction

Life since Jackson deserves a lead in. The basics are simple, but the story is in the details. First, the Jackson I am referring to is Jackson Drew Liane, born on Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 3:45pm. Second, let's back up a bit...

I was a wild teenager. Not arrested or kicked out of school wild, but I carried a reputation among the parents of my peers in our small North Texas suburb. Let's leave it at that.

The basics of this story follow one of the oldest stories in existence: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds a way to win girl back. But again, the story is in the details.

I met my wife the summer after I graduated high school. Three weeks before I left for college. If my brain had anything to do with it, I would have simply had a three week fling and let time and distance take it's course. But my brain didn't have much say. My wild romantic took hold and held on for dear life. A new world opened to us both. Letters of our undying love were mailed back and forth, decorated with ink illustrations of the words we could not find. We promised to love each other forever and never forget how we felt right then... But of course we screwed it up. More so, I screwed it up. But neither one of us was ready for such a lifelong commitment. We both had far too many mistakes we still needed to make. I needed to see my rebellious youth through it's fruition. And she needed to find the life she always wanted wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be. I quite blatantly carried a torch for her over the next ten years. I even got her to admit she still carried one for me during a few moments of weakness. But in the end, or what seemed like the end, we canceled our membership to love and moved on. I moved to LA to chase fame and fortune, and she got married.

Then about five years later, a funny thing happened. I was on a ladder putting up fake spider webs for a crappy horror film I was working on when she called me from a hotel bathroom to tell me how much she loved me. We had kind of gotten back in touch after almost three years of not speaking at all. Looking back, I think she was fishing for me to try to win her back, and I wasn't quite ready to tear down the wall I spent so long building. Actually that's exactly happened. A few hours and glasses of wine after talking for the first time in three years, she called me back to tell me how much she missed me. She was going to be with her husband for the rest of her life, but she really missed me. I spent the rest of the weekend crying. Several months later, she called me from the bathroom. I wasn't sure which was more significant: how much I hated what I was doing at the time, or that it was her wedding anniversary. Either way, it was the beginning of the beginning. A week later, she left her husband. A year later, I moved back to Texas. Three months after that, she got pregnant. We got married, found a house, and now we're parents of the most beautiful baby boy I think I've ever seen.



I'm not too big on religion or crediting Jesus with every good thing that happens. But there is definitely something bigger than us in this life. And things tend to get a whole lot easier once you learn to accept it, go with it, and be thankful you're not the one in charge. I prayed for a long time that my life would work out okay. That I would find someone I could truly love and be happy with and build a family. And finding this girl again. Finding Alana. And every single perfect, minute detail that coordinated us getting back together. Then having Jackson. It's proof positive that I must have done something right along the way.