I knew I needed to do some soul searching about my first born son Jack, who must have been about 14 year’s of age at that time. Having our toddler, the ever energetic and smiling little Henry in the house brought into living the giant hole I’d created by abandoning Jack when I was young and ignorant of life.
I could go into minute detail how that came to be, try to put it into a context someone might have a scrap of empathy for, but for this I will just take my failures as a young father cold and unsugared.
After I dropped Megan and Henry off at the airport I took a vow of silence and went home alone. I wouldn’t speak until I heard her voice. I turned off all devices but my phone.
In the silence of our house, Albuquerque sirens wailing through the walls, I began unpacking the thousands of items I’d been hoarding and dragging with me, rental to rental. Some of it went back into my teens. Boxes of yellow-pads spilled out on the floor, a dozen screen plays and several neatly typed manuscripts splayed among them. Hundreds of items, prob every crappy plastic chotshki I’d ever picked up at a fair booth.
I began to see myself. I began to understand both the depth of the mistakes I’d made and how they seemed unavoidable at the time. Day two was deeply depressing. I leafed through a hundred yellow pads with daily reminders written on them that I was a failure, incapable, that something was wrong with me.
Who knew you could write the sentence “what’s wrong with me” in so many different ways? At least that’s an accomplishment.
By day three I found myself hollowed out, weeping as I lay on the floor in my pile of reminders.
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