father and son
So this morning I found the text from the ex reporting son broke the Ipad’s screen. “Now he can’t call you on FaceTime.” It wasn’t hers. It belongs to the new fellow. I get an explanation: “that’s why he (new fellow) didn’t want it in his (son’s)room.” The text feels like a rant but probably isn’t. “He doesn’t take care of stuff well. He is too young for that. He is really sad about it and he is sad that he is now not getting a new screen…”
I respond: “He is young. He has to be taught to take care of things. It’s not an innate attribute to care for things. Sometimes in breaking things we learn the limits of the fragility of things and life. It’s how we learn to be more careful.” You might imagine someone who can respond thusly might be pretty reasonable. I don’t feel reasonable this morning.
Broken Things, Broken Families
Ex put my truck in a flat spin in the rain. It came to rest on the center medium, facing oncoming traffic. Unbeknownst to her, she had sheered the tire from the axel. It looked like a future car that had it’s tire folded up for flight, shades of Back to the Future. She couldn’t get the car to go. She called and said, “I think I broke the truck.” It’s just thing, so not mad. “Are you or son hurt?” No. Okay. Work the problem. There was the time she put diesel in the…
