The boy...

Somewhere he got shoulders.

At 15 he's taken on a man's frame almost overnight.

Time is a river....

I remember well, because I'm pretty sure it was yesterday. Packing him in a snowsuit, then a wagon and heading to the library to search for new Handy Mandy books.

We had him when I was 40.

After six years of failing on a monthly basis.

It was like belonging to the worst fruit of the month club.

Every 30 days you looked at the box with a combination of hope and dread.

Every month the fruit would be turned and spoiled.

It got so I couldn't bear the pain on her face.

72 months later it happened. I got a phone call from Vegas where she was at a conference. Joy literally poured out of the phone. She has not had a bad day since.

I stood there looking at the phone. And brace yourself for a moment of personal honesty . I have always been the pull it out of your ass, make it up as you go along guy. Which has a certain swashbuckling appeal at twenty, sad at forty, at sixty people are wondering how you set the kitchen on fire while trying to fix the toaster

using aluminum foil and a clothes pin.

Due to scheduling and horror stories about daycare I end up being primary care giver. She goes back to work after six months and as the door closes I look at him and he looks at me and we share a thought.

I will fuck this up.

A living monument to ingrained insecurities , self destructive behaviors and egocentric world views am I. Be candid I wouldn't leave a cat in my care.

He's a easy baby, you can sit him down and hand him a book and he'll sit there quietly and look at it. Not much crying, sleeps 12 hours at a shot.

The extraordinary becomes the common day, working my way through a list of a thousand books to be read to him by age four. He seems to dig it...

Still I feel like a fraud , playing a part, fooling everyone and no one.

Until...One day, we are at the beach, big rollers coming in after a storm. He's tugging at me, fearless as two year olds are, to go deeper.

"Easy buddy, we got to be careful." I say.

He looks up, his face open, not a care in the world. "It's OK dad, I'm with you."

With that, all my doubts and apprehensions fell away.

I was a dad.