I was hanging out with my son Gavin tonight. He has cars crashing and DUI’s on his landscape, he has father’s and mother’s to call. It is amazing to me how these kids don’t get it. They call you down in the dumps if you’re lucky. This kid never calls me. He just wants to do it his own way. Sometimes we have the answers.
“Feel good about yourself I say, you are beautiful and young”
He really is in the dumps though. A girlfriend that just left because she was too controlling and now all alone.
“Gavin I told you that bit about girls, they set us straight.”
“I know dad”
He called me dad, I feel good about this interaction.
“Let’s go get a beer” I say because that is all I have to offer. He is 21 now.
We weave through the night. I buy him beers even though he has to work tomorrow morning at 5 am, the kid needs to learn.
“Hey killer, how are feeling?”
“A lot like you dad” he says back to me
“Ok, this is how it works, first of all you have to believe in yourself like switch in your head. You have to know that you are good… but better yet, you have to know that you are making the world a better place, just focus on making the world a better place and everything else will happen.
He takes me to a place over by his Starbucks to buy a bottle of wine, right next to his employment, there are these cats drinking a super expensive bottle of Mcallan distillery scotch 20 year malt, and they wave Gavin over…
“This is your dad?” they say, he looks like a kid
“This is my father” he says right back to them and he hugs me.
(I feel like a million dollar bill)
They pour scotch all around in cheap plastic cups.
“I can’t believe this is your father, he looks so young” the next round of scotch.
He claims me, I think in the back of my head,
And I drink more scotch, and we have more of those moments where he is rock star and just wants to get out of there, and I am rock star and don’t know where to place my identity.
I don’t want to stay here, in this place it is weird to me, I just want to go home, in this place a hotel room.
Gavin says “this is a good bottle of wine”
The owner comes ever over him, “that is an excellent bottle of wine” he says, let me ring you up “dad” I feel good that he called me “dad” as I paid for it all.
Wild dogs are howling.
I hold them all in close to me, with all these creatures constantly trying to come in, until you love them over and over again. We love, I guess that is what we got going for us. It is that big!
|