Month: June 2026

The Shape of Things

The longest that I’ve ever been apart from my son is about a week.

When I was traveling for work, I would leave on Monday and return on Thursday or Friday. While I was gone, we would call or FaceTime, anything to stay connected. Once, for a trip to San Diego, he snuck a small stuffed dalmatian into my luggage, so I sent him pictures of the adventures that my traveling companion had. The plane, the hotel, a restaurant, the beach.

Even then, he would sometimes come with me on trips, especially back to Colorado, but also to Seattle, New York, and Las Vegas. I think back now on how lucky we were to be together on those trips and to have those shared experiences.

A few years ago, he attended a camp hosted by our local Epilepsy Foundation affiliate. That was the most disconnected I had been from him, dropping him off on a Sunday and not seeing him again until camp ended on Friday. The first year was rough, partly from the separation but partly from worry about his seizures, even though he was in a camp for kids with seizures, surrounded by doctors, nurses, and staff who volunteered their time to give children like my son this experience. The second year at camp was easier, but it still wasn’t easy.

Last fall was the first time I had put him on a plane without me. He was traveling to see his mother. It was only for a few days, and the change in family dynamics was still new, so the feeling of distance was intertwined with the realization of a different future where this would be the shape of things now.

It was repeated over winter break when he spent Christmas with his mother. A longer stretch apart at a time that historically brought more family together.

As I write this, my son is preparing for another trip to visit his mother.

This time, he’ll be gone for six weeks.

For the past year, we’ve built our new routines in our new life. The logistics of work, school, and appointments. Managing medications and filling the pill containers every Sunday morning while I drink a cup of coffee. The dogs piling on his bed to wake him up every morning, with me not far behind. Playing basketball in the driveway after school, and video games before dinner. All of it built around his presence. And now there’s this stretch ahead where the house will be quiet in a way it hasn’t been before.

He understands how long he’ll be gone. He’s excited about it, too, which is the right thing and I’m glad for it. His mom’s place has a pool. They’re going to Colorado to visit family. He’ll get to do things he doesn’t get to do here, and he’ll get time with her that he needs and deserves. I’m going to back off and let them have that. Whatever it looks like in reality, right now he’s looking forward to it.

I want that for him. I do. And I’ll miss him every day of it.

The first morning will have its own weight. There’s somewhere I need to be, something tied to the process of how we got here, and I’ll go do that and then come home to a house that’s already started its six weeks.

The plan is to fill the time. We’ll still text and FaceTime. We’ll still play Fortnite and Rocket League online. That part doesn’t have to change. But the house will still be quieter than I’m used to. I’ll lean into work. Get the yard projects done that I’ve been putting off, because spending time with him always felt like a better use of an afternoon. Spend more time with my goddaughter. Let the dogs fill some of the space he leaves behind, which they will, because that’s what they do.

I don’t have a clean way to think about it. He’s excited, and I’m glad, and I’m dreading it, and I know it’ll be fine, and I know six weeks is a long time. All of that is true at the same time.

This is the shape of things now. The separation brought a new geography to his life, and six weeks is part of that.

I’ve known it was coming.

Knowing doesn’t make it smaller.

Our Thing

There is a picture from around his second birthday. He is standing in the driveway holding a basketball that is almost as big as he is, looking up at the hoop with complete seriousness.

He couldn’t make the shot on his own. I would catch the ball on its way up and guide it the rest of the way in, or lift him over my head so he could drop it through himself. When it went in he celebrated like he had done it alone. I made a big deal of it every time.

That was the beginning.

When we moved to Philadelphia we didn’t have a driveway anymore, but there was a schoolyard at his school a few blocks away. By then we were already on our epilepsy journey, already living inside the routines and the vigilance and the weight of it. We’d walk over and shoot around. I taught him how to play 21, the same game I had played as a kid. It was something ordinary we could do together in the middle of everything that wasn’t.

When we moved into our current house, the basketball hoop was one of the first things we bought. We were playing before the furniture was arranged, before the boxes were unpacked, before the house felt like ours. After years in the city we finally had a driveway, a yard, open space. We went outside and used it.

A few days after we moved in, the neighbor kids knocked on the door and asked if my son wanted to play. I watched from the driveway as they shot around together. In the city, friendships had required effort and coordination, phone calls and scheduling, nothing that could just happen. This did. It reminded me of how I grew up, wherever we lived there were always kids around and you’d just find each other. He got that here. Maybe for the first time.

For a few years the three of them played together regularly. Eventually they grew in different directions the way kids do. But my son and I kept playing.

His school has an intramural basketball program and he joined it his first year there. He wasn’t always the best player on the floor but he was the one with the biggest heart. He became a leader on the team, the kind that the other kids looked to, not because of his stats but because of how he showed up. Being on a team with his friends, competing, belonging to something. That mattered.

We are five summers into this driveway now. He is taller than me. He blocks my shots in a way that is partly skill and partly satisfaction, and I can see both in his face when he does it. Before we play he puts on music. Rock and roll, always. The specific song rotates. If he’s losing he’ll sometimes switch to something with more energy, a more powerful jam, as if the playlist is responsible for the score. I let him believe that.

The only things keeping me competitive are my jump shot and my free throws. That balance is shifting. I know it.

I don’t mind. Every moment with him is something I don’t take for granted. I have watched him struggle with so much. And so when he makes a good shot, when he beats me and celebrates, when he is just a kid in the driveway playing basketball with his dad, I hold onto that. He is getting older. He has his own life filling in around him, his own friends, his own things. I am grateful we still have this one.

He’ll get home from school and ask if we can play. He puts the music on and we go outside.

That’s enough for me.