Sadly, I am not a black man.

Hopefully, after an extremely steep learning curve and a few hours, there will be a picture here of Dante at the fishing hole.

Lordy, I miss him.

He's gone to stay with his father, who lives 7 hours away. It was the thing to do at the time. It seems to be the thing to do with the rest of his childhood. I know, I know, he's only been gone 2 months. My spidey-sense is tingling, though, and it says he isn't coming back.

Can I help it if I'm not a black man? He sort of called me out on that, and I had to be like, "Well, son, you got me there." I blame hormones. His, not mine. He hated moving to West Virginia (good God, who could blame him?) and he had gotten really attached to his dad before we left. They saw each other every weekend, which was a big switch from him not calling at all when he was a toddler. They just sort of...grew into each other.

And now, Daddy is the largest figure in his life. When we were having a really tough day after we'd had several weeks worth of tough days, it just all came tumbling out. "Maybe you ought to go live with your father for a little while." I had said. He burst into tears. So did I. "I'm not mad at you," I had said. "You just aren't very happy here. Maybe you'd be happier if you stayed with Daddy." We were just getting to the point where everything was an argument. Breakfast was an argument. Did we love each other? You bet. Maybe we were just too much alike.

He rubbed his eyes and nodded. "Yes," he said. "I want to live with Daddy." "You can change your mind, you know," I said. "I know," he said. He was a different boy from that day on. No more bickering, no pointless arguments. I'm sure I had fed the fire myself. He is MY child, after all. He just withdrew his firewood. Until we left for Kentucky, he would say, "I'm going to miss you so much." And we'd cry a little. But he never said he didn't want to go.

In the end, we hugged and cried at the last minute. At his dad's apartment, he got up and showed me all his new chores (which he was weirdly excited about), and announced that the first thing he did when he came home from school was his homework. He whispered at the last minute that he had changed his mind, but I think that was because I was about to leave and it hurt, and taking it back would make the hurt stop. I told him it was too late to change his mind, but in the summer if he wanted to come home, I'd sure pack everything up and move him right back.

Since then, he does more for himself, he talks more "grown up" and he has a busy little life. It's tough to be the 8:30 phone call. I don't know what he has for breakfast or what he wore to school, and half the time he'll shrug (I can hear it through the phone) and say "I don't know" when I ask. I'm the part time parent now. I still don't know how I feel about that. He never talks about coming back, only when am I "coming down" for a visit. I suspect he'll stay.

I only hope that by getting out of his way, I've helped him get a bit closer to finding it.

--Virgil