Flying Low in Downsville
I spoke for about an hour last night with Sam’s mom about his upcoming visit. I think it’s the inordinately long period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving that has me feeling so down: I’m worried about everything regarding Sam, especially his refusal to speak to me on the phone and the presence of her new boyfriend in his life.
I don’t have any objection to Jose: he’s a nice guy, good to my kid, and far more pleasant to deal with during pick up and drop off than those two troglodytes she calls “parents”. But there’s still tension: no one likes to be living Hank Williams songs, and it bothers me that my son might be bonding more closely to his mom’s boyfriend than to his real dad.
On top of this is Melissa’s continued insistence that a month or more is too long a visit for Sam, this time using the excuse that he’s too young and it’ll screw up his development (as if being prevented from having a real relationship with his father has a neutral or benign effect). And yeah, I know everyone says it’ll be different when he gets older, but that doesn’t exactly help me now.
During the conversation, Melissa mentioned that Sam isn’t so much reluctant to talk to me on the phone as he’s in that self-centered stage that very young children live in. He’s happy to speak to me, but it’s on his schedule. “A lot of times,” she said, “he calls you and you don’t answer the phone. He gets really upset, and throws the phone on the floor! I mean, he tried to call you tonight, and you never answered.”
That was enough for me: I lost it. I had my phone on me when he called and I just didn’t hear it ringing. Missed him again. I just felt so absent from my son’s life, like I was letting him down, like I’m not there for him when he wants me, like the big piece of shit absent father I’ve been trying my best not to be, and whoomp, there’s that big fist called “Reality” which punches me in the stomach and says “See, you fell asleep on the job again!”
And no amount of cheerleading from my friends and family, telling me what a great job I’m doing under extremely difficult circumstances, helps. It just doesn’t. It makes me feel like a retarded 10 year old who just figured out how to hold a fork properly.
Sometimes I wonder if it would be better for everyone if I did what her parents expected me to do in the first place: disappear. My kid wouldn’t be subjected to jarring absences from his mom and his dad, I’d finally get off this fucking rollercoaster that never seems to end (although that final plunge would be a doozy), and could slowly put my life together again.
But that’s not going to happen either: like my father, I have a seemingly infinite capacity for self-torment, and so I will keep running along on the hamster wheel, trying to keep up but going nowhere fast.
Not that I was dad material to begin with, but this whole experience has been so painful that I’m not sure I’m willing to risk even more heartbreak on another kid, not when 50% of marriages and partnerships end in Splitsville. It’s gonna be at least 10 years before I’m over this, and by that time I’ll be almost fifty. That’s Grandpa territory.
Yup, quite a life. Quite a life. That ol’ Ben Franklin Bridge looks better every day: too bad I’m scared of heights, have a fear of falling, and have a sense of responsibility to the son I never see.
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