Crossroads - Part IV

 

 My son’s adjustment to the new living arrangements was about as good as I could have expected.  I would always be filled with “absentee parent guilt” but, I really worked hard to not let my own personal pain impact on our time together.

I truly came to live for those two days a week when I could share some time with my son. 

Once the pattern was in place… we started to work on creating our own memories.  I never wanted to displace memories that he had of his mom, him and I as a family but, I wanted him to be comfortable with the new arrangements. 

In that first year, I was working some insane hours during the week but I was able to hold fast on my assertion that the weekend days were my son’s.  During those days, he was priority #1.

We typically watched a lot of movies, both in theaters and by renting movies at the local video store.  I enjoyed letting him pick and we always discussed both the good and bad with each selection viewed.

In addition, my son was pretty enamored with computers and video games.  He would often bring one of his gaming consoles with him and we would rent games and I would watch him play those games (I’ve never had the patience to take part in these games for very long).

In the fall of that year, I took my first vacation in this new position.  Not having much money or time, we went on an extended road trip through New England and into the Canadian province of Quebec to the city of Montreal.  In all we spent a week and saw some really cool things.  We spent a couple of days lolling on the beach in Rhode Island, we spent a couple of days in Montreal walking around the city and trying to make sense of the signage in the city that was rarely in English.

At the end of that trip, I was seriously depressed when I had to drop him off.  I had been with him exclusively for nine days and was totally used to having him around to talk and share experiences with.

His schoolwork was never garnering great marks but, he was a solid B student for most of his school career up until the breakup.  The next school year, he started to receive a few more C grades but no failing marks.  I was willing to let him slide for a time but continued to harp on the importance of keeping his schoolwork up and always asked if I could help him in any school projects that he might have been assigned.

Things were going rather swimmingly with him and I.  I thought for sure that we might have turned the corner and he was rebounding well from the breakup of his family unit.

That is until we were driving south after a fun weekend around Thanksgiving…