Julian, I have never really left

Going through old pictures Courtney took out of her feed on Facebook, I find my boy, how much has he grown. He’s a full-blown toddler, and it seems like yesterday that I held a baby in my arms, and I look for unsung clues in the images depicted. I find him by the pool, shyly warming up to the water and I wonder if perhaps he’s in need of a male model, just as mothers smother us boys, we also need a father who inspires us to go out there and fight lions and zombies. I wonder if he misses me, if there are moments when my masculine aura could have shone over his first timid years of life and make him bolder, hungrier… I wonder if I haven’t become my father. I find I miss. I have never cried in my life the way I have for my boys. I want him to grow up healthy and so I climb on an airplane for him and go see him five times last year along. I can sense the warmth and smell the texture of unscathed love by those closest to him. His mother’s family isn’t like mine, they opened their home to her and offered her shelter when she felt desolate, a single mom who will earn a bachelor’s degree and has worked from home just so that she can be close to her baby boy. I loved that girl so much once that I did what I have done with everything I have ever loved before: I pushed her away. We were never meant to be, given our personal histories, our disparate personalities, and out of the mess of broken homes and ebriated nights and childhood wounds and silly fights, who would’ve thought such a marvelous creature would emerge? I can still close my eyes and see him come into this world, the day he was born, the temperature of the room, the bitter-cold weather outside, the trips to the nearby deli, the excitement and the sorrow, the adventure and the uncertainty, the moments of unspoken hatred I went through walking back home one night and not finding them there, and the immense love that I feel at any given moment. How much more I am willing to give, how little I am taking, how has my relationship with my older son evolved too because of it. I think of him by the pool and I see my boy, he has a father in me, through Google Hangouts, terrifyingly flying over and over again to see him, getting him diapers and cooking for him, I cannot wait until I hold him in my arms and tell him I have never really left.