Last night I was packing up a few items to drop off at the local Goodwill this weekend and I picked up one of the items I’m still undecided as to what to do with it. It’s an old cell phone, the last LG phone I had before I upgraded to an iPhone. Amazingly it still has a small charge on it and powers up. I’d forgotten what these were like and it took me a few seconds to remember how to navigate through the menus using the tiny buttons and scroll wheel. It still had a few text messages on it and as I was selecting each to delete it, I found a series of messages from my son. He would have been eleven years old, I think, if I have the year right.

At the time he was spending most of his time at his dad’s. Custody and visitation and parenting agreements were in a constant state of flux for several years. When we moved to a bigger place with a second bedroom he was able to spend more time with me. These were difficult years for both of us. I was married to someone who was done raising children. While he loved my son, he didn’t necessarily want to share me with him, and I went along with it. There was a period of time though when we tried to negotiate an agreement with my children’s father to get him full-time because we thought it was the right thing to do. It didn’t work out and it’s hard to remember now all the reasoning and justifications and arguments that took place during those years.

It all came back to me though when I found these messages.

It’s been a long, and rough, road for us. We both made a lot of mistakes and bad decisions.

He’s 22 years old now and living with his girlfriend and he’s happy. He’s working, paying his own bills, and as lovable and kind-hearted as he’s always been. They’re coming over on Sunday to watch the big game with me so I’ve stocked up on chicken wings and junk food. 🙂 He still texts me “I love you” and pops in to surprise his sister at work when he’s in the area. He still has some work to do, as we all do, but I’m happy that he’s in my life and our relationship has survived the mess we went through.

Today’s song selection takes me back to driving home from visiting a friend who lived a couple of hours away. It was just the two of us in the car and we were listening to the radio (back when we still did that, before Apple Music and Spotify and Bluetooth). Jeremy wanted to hear this song so I called the radio station to request it. We waited, and waited, and I’m not even sure that we got to hear it before we got home.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!