Life, At the Speed of Light
Jun. 3rd, 2009 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdayTonight, in another of those startling turnabouts that he seems to excel at, my son broke up with his girlfriend. Afterward, he came home and gave little Jay a bath, which he's done maybe twice since this now ex-girlfriend arrived on the scene, and brought him upstairs to sleep in the room that was supposed to be his and little Jay's before all of this.
Maybe this is what we've been hoping for, all these months, an undoubtedly painful but necessary step toward my son re-establishing himself in the parenting role he gave up to accomodate this girl. If so, let's hope that he now continues on this potentially more positive and responsible track. Because the other tragedy in all of it, besides the little boy's loss of his mom and dad, has been our son's failure to live up to the promise we once saw in him as a parent.
Of course the evening brought some other feelings as well. It happened after my grandson, starting up the stairs with pillow under one arm and blanket under the other, said in that tentative little voice, "Good night, Poppa." A few minutes later, I felt that closed-in panic I'd felt when he and his dad moved out to be with one of the previous girlfriends.
As I opened the front door, to let the night air in and the suffocating panic out, I hoped that this would be the end, for this little boy, of trying his six-year-old-best to cope with the virtual absence of both his parents...
Maybe this is what we've been hoping for, all these months, an undoubtedly painful but necessary step toward my son re-establishing himself in the parenting role he gave up to accomodate this girl. If so, let's hope that he now continues on this potentially more positive and responsible track. Because the other tragedy in all of it, besides the little boy's loss of his mom and dad, has been our son's failure to live up to the promise we once saw in him as a parent.
Of course the evening brought some other feelings as well. It happened after my grandson, starting up the stairs with pillow under one arm and blanket under the other, said in that tentative little voice, "Good night, Poppa." A few minutes later, I felt that closed-in panic I'd felt when he and his dad moved out to be with one of the previous girlfriends.
As I opened the front door, to let the night air in and the suffocating panic out, I hoped that this would be the end, for this little boy, of trying his six-year-old-best to cope with the virtual absence of both his parents...
