Nobody’s Child #46
3 years ago it was 18 months after my divorce was finalised, itself 9 months after my son’s mother and I had separated.
He was 8 years old, and the new routines of a divorced life were becoming established.
When somebody far away from Kansas City asked me how my son and I were now doing, I answered:
Mr Moo is doing great. Doing well at school and I only ever see him in great form. Our own relationship has strengthened, and I love it even more than before. Last summer helped a lot. The longer period of times we spent together really did him well, and seemed to eradicate the last difficulty he might have had regarding the break-up of his parents - which was in dealing with the handovers.
Our times together are a complete blast. Yes I miss the routines of years ago: of him coming into my bed every morning, and our breakfasts together, along with taking him to school and our daily football games, and stories and bedtime duties, but what time we have now is what we have and I have accepted it and genuinely do make the most of it.
Every Wednesday for 2 hours, and every second weekend, we are father and son. And half of all the holidays.
We listen to the radio, BBC and RTE, children’s dramas and entertainment. And pop programmes. I download odd and interesting animations for him to watch as his “Saturday Cartoons”. And I get my hands on longer things that we watch on the computer for I am still without television. We have watched 3 webcasted series of Doctor Who, and I have brought the world of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau and of Cool Runnings and Shaolin Soccer to him.
We walk the dog on the trail. We play GAA and soccer in the park. We go on hikes and we go camping. We play a ton of board games, from Mancala, and Othello, through Chess, Cul-de-sac, and Scrabble’s Upwords. And we’re deadly at Corx. We ride our bikes together, on trails, or just to the cinema. We get the buses, in a town where so few do, and sometimes we put our bikes on the buses. When it snows we sled together.
Inside we continue to draw and do art projects together. We have yet to finish a comic we’ve been working on. At night times we take turns at reading to each other and often still sing.
I take him to documentaries, French cartoons, and Chinese films. We eat at old haunts and new places.
His cousins and the rest of his mother’s family I include in our lives, and I also introduce him to other people and worlds. Staying in New York with my friend from home was a blast, as was the train getting there. I loved playing football with Mr Moo in Central Park. And I loved how he taught me all about the Dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum. But watching him remember New York has been wonderful too. There’s a memory there stamped for life.
In truth I often feel guilty at how much I enjoy my time with him.
See Also:
#30 My Kansas City Story, A Summary
All Posts in this Kansas City story
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
The boy is very very lucky to have you in his life. I wish you could see him again soon.