No matter what happened between my son’s mom and myself – we made the best kid! God, I miss him right now just starting to think about him – and I just saw him a couple hours ago. But he’s 13 now, and starting to want to do more things with his friends, and not as much with his dad. I get it, he’s growing up and it’s natural – but that’s the part I’m scared of. It’s been mostly just him and I over these years – and selfishly I don’t want less time with him, I want more. He’s my best friend. I don’t know how to function without him most days. One thing I’ve learned about myself is that when he’s with his mother, is when I feel lonely or sad. When he’s with me I feel purpose and direction.
Enough about me though, let’s talk about him. He’s smart, he’s funny and he’s thoughtful. One of his former teachers told me he was wise beyond his years. I’m not ashamed at all to tell you that I run my thoughts and ideas by him – and I tell him things about my love life, or lack thereof. All the time I’ll tell him something – look at him and just say, “you’re a kid, why did I just tell you that.” He just shrugs it off like a trooper though – he’s used to it at this point. I think sometimes I tell him things because I feel like when I was a kid I didn’t hear enough – then when I was 27, something would happen and all of the sudden the microwave in my brain would turn on and something confusing would suddenly make sense.
Quite possibly one of my favorite things about him is his heart. It seems bigger than a 13-year-old boy’s heart should be. He loves animals, his friends and his family. I have this amazing picture my sister-in-law (his old babysitter) sent me one day where he had all the littler kids sitting around him in a circle, eyes closed, making some weird sign with their hands. He told me they were meditating. The best part though – it was a day the kids were being wild, and he took it upon himself to help wrangle them in. I have another picture of him from a birthday party, holding a baby kangaroo – and he looked like the happiest boy in the world. My caption for the picture when I posted it on Facebook was, “this boy out here living his best life, while I’m cleaning up the kitchen.”
I also love my trips with him – taking him out and showing him the world! No matter your intentions, sometimes kids see things they don’t completely need to either. In one weekend, we went to a baseball game where there were riots happening, only to attend a soccer game the next day, which included a drag show as a part of the pre-game festivities. I guess we could say I’m getting him cultured.
The example that always comes to mind though when I think of his heart, happened during our trip to Washington, D.C. We had been spending the day seeing the museums and all the things, when I needed a minute to stop into a CVS to grab some chap stick. My lips were so wind burnt I literally thought they were about to fall off of my face. We walk in – this was one of those fancy two-story stores, in a downtown setting. Being from a small town of 4,000 people – I’m always amazed by how the other half live.
We wander around for a few minutes, not finding what I need. One of the first things that stuck out to me though, was that all the hand lotion was behind one of those little glass doors where when you lift it, a buzzer would go off. Here in small town USA we mostly have those for razors. As I’m walking down the aisle I think to myself “so, either everyone in DC is extremely dry, or rampant masturbators.” I shrug my shoulders and think, “to each their own I suppose.”
The hunt for chap stick on the first floor came up with zilch. I’d say we made it four or five stairs up the flight to the second floor when we heard a commotion behind us. We turn, and see what appears to be a (homeless) man frantically throwing as much hand lotion into an open bookbag as he could! Have you ever seen it on movies or television – when someone slides their arm down a row of something, to clear it off in a hurry? Well, he was doing that, and the bag was full in seconds.
My son, (bless his heart) says to me, “Dad, do something!” “I am,” I said to him as he turned his head to look at me ever bewildered. “What I’m doing is not getting either of us stabbed over hand lotion,” I said. Not really wanting my son to see the correct way to commit a crime, I placed my hand on his back and nudged him forward as we walked up the rest of the stairs to the second floor, to continue the hunt for the ever-elusive Washington D.C. tube of chap stick.
The boy’s big heart wanted me to stop that man from committing a crime because he thought that was the right thing to do. I’m sure a lot of kids would. I explained to him later that sometimes the right thing, and the safest thing to do – is nothing. I told him if that man was harming someone, sure – I would have grabbed the heaviest thing on the shelf and hit him over the head with it. But I did not then, and still do not give a shit about CVS’s profits – or what that man was going to do with all that lotion. If CVS wanted more profit, maybe they should not waste so much paper on their three-foot-long receipts – and save a few trees in the process.
We did meet a few other homeless men on the streets of Washington, D.C. on that trip. My son had never encountered too many homeless people in his short life – and he got lessons in misfortune and mental health, all wrapped into one trip. One man poked his head out of a tent on a sidewalk to scream across the street at us and call us terrorists, while another played basketball (without a ball) in the subway – almost falling onto the tracks below more than once. Like I said above – getting the boy cultured.
I guess I’m not special. I’m not saying or doing anything for my kid that the rest of you wouldn’t. We all shielded our kids from the monsters in the closet when they were little – and try our best to teach them to fight off the proverbial monsters when they’re older.
I feel like I’ve always been a good dad, but when I was sick for months in 2018 and not knowing why – only to pass out in front of him one day on the steps of our apartment, I knew I had to start doing things differently. That was when I found out I was diabetic, had high blood pressure and high cholesterol – the trifecta of heartache.
I wanted to be around to watch him grow up. The bragging about getting myself into shape in the last chapter – I remember running on the treadmill thinking one day I wanted to be his best man. So, if there’s anyone in this world I’d be lost without – it’s him…
Go West, young man
So, we were standing there on the side of a mountain, looking over the edge at this enormous gulch below. The side we were standing on was mostly rocky, with a few trees here and there. But the other side was completely covered in pine trees – more pine trees than I’ve ever witnessed in one location. I seriously could not fathom how many trees grew on the side of that mountain. All the way down at the bottom – a tiny creek ran through the gulch. My mind wandered about how this might have looked a million years ago, and how this gulch was cut through the side of this mountain. I pulled Bryce in close and said, “just look at this man. Look at how big this mountain is – and think about how small we really are.”
I told him when you look at the Bighorns on a map they are about this big – holding up my pointer finger and thumb to resemble about an inch. “But then when you get out here and see it first hand, you can’t put into words how big it really is.”
Being out and seeing the world, and being 24 hours car ride away from home made me think about the time I told my mom that I was moving with my friends to Dayton. Needless to say, she did not enjoy that conversation. Growing up in a home where driving to Columbus was a huge deal – I wasn’t too surprised by her reaction. I honestly don’t think she spoke to me for about a week after that. “Mom, it’s two hours away. I can leave at 7 am and still be here in time for breakfast.” But I have no regrets – traveling around with my friends in a punk rock band taught me lessons I still think about to this day.
But all these years later I get it. Thank you, momma, for caring enough about me to not want to see me go away. Not all children these days have parents at all, much less ones that do what they can to make sure their kids make smart decisions.
Our number one job as parents is to do what we can to protect our kids. The world we live in these days is a scary place. We have to look out not only for their physical safety, but emotional safety as well. It tears me up to wonder what went on in his brain when I had to explain to him what to do if anyone other than me were to harm or grab him in Walmart. He’s also come home before and told me someone said something mean at school – and I find myself wanting to fight a nine-year-old. There are just too many things in this world today to try and shield them from.
Which also brings me to the damn snake. On a beautiful morning fishing at Muddy Guard Reservoir #2 – complete with a backdrop looking like something straight off the canvas of a Bob Ross painting, Bryce and I just had to encounter a slithery bastard – making his way mere feet from us on the trail like he owned the place. Not being from there, I had no idea what kind of snake this was – and all I could think in that moment was seeing the rattlesnake signs in the Badlands the day before.
I put my hand over his chest and pulled him in as close to me as I could – feeling his little heart beating harder than the drums on Kanye’s 808’s and Heartbreak. Now I know every parent says they would take a bullet for their kids, but to actually prove it to myself – putting myself between him and this death noodle honestly made me feel good. Snakes scare the hell out of me.
I want to show my son the world, so he’s not afraid of how big it is when he’s older. I want to show him what it feels like to be in awe. I want to make sure he knows what it feels like when someone cares, and when someone doesn’t. I want to show him how to treat others. I want to show him how to act when he wins, and when he loses.
I don’t want him to overlook. I want him to seek. I want him to experience joy, and wonder, and be amazed by the enormity. I want to do everything I can to set him up for a life he loves. But most importantly, I don’t want him to be more than a few hours away for breakfast.