(no subject)

[thisnewday]

Just before I left for the hospital yesterday, little Jay's mom picked him up to stay overnight for the holiday. I'm really happy that, since he and his dad have moved back home, there's been an improved spirit of cordiality and cooperation between my son and little Jay's mom. Before that, despite many expressions of concern from my wife and me, it had become increasingly apparent that the new girlfriend was quietly manipulating every situation and circumstance to push little Jay's mother out of his life.

Of course, it was having a terrible effect on the life and spirit of the little boy. So much for having a master's in social work from a prestigious university. Some people are simply incapable of looking beyond their own selfish interests, even when it comes to the lives of children. Which, unfortunately, must also be said of my son's role in the situation.

Even before that had become a concern, however, I'd sort of taken the part of Mamet's narrator in the train station. But as an active participant in the little boy's life, and not, as I eventually forced myself to become, a passive observer. And one of the things that I quite often did, in those private moments we're sometimes privileged to share with kids, was to tell him that he was "my very favorite person in the whole world."

I did it not simply to buffer him against the horrible emotional beating that parental separation and discord bring into children's lives, but because it was, and is, absolutely true. So just before he left yesterday, I pulled him aside to tell him again and added that he was "the best little boy I'd ever known." Because I want him to carry that with him, like Mamet's magic coins, regardless of anything that may happen in his or his grandfather's life...