Andrew still calls me Daddy

Back home from traveling, westward ha for this trip (kinda hard not to travel west, especially if one's flying outta Dulles, peace and blessings be upon TSA the creatures). Besides the indignities heaped upon us the non-business class non-first-class traveling public by the airport architects, airport authorities, airport securitymongers, airport airlines and airport obellos for all I care, the time differential between the Left and Right Coasts ensures that should the traveling parent wish to call home to check in or otherwise let all know that all's well the traveling parent mought as well dial directly into voicemail. Pfui to all that; traveling is becoming fairly pointless as we strive to upgrade our urban environments to ensure that at ground level there ain't a euro's bit of difference between Seattle and Baltimore. The Armchair Traveler has coopted urban design; hence I travel 3000 nautical miles westward ha, first thing I do is scope out the Starbucks.

Playing bedtime roulette one night, madcap that I am I gambled on actually reaching an awake guyses, and won -- Andrew picked up. No one else was home; The Mama and the other guyses were out gallivanting about, dilspatching sleeper agent J to ize the very librarians of the world. I could see them in my mind's eye, J dashing through the library, The Flash albeit with arms akimbo, books tumbling off the shelf in his supersonic wake, kinda like Slimer but cuter. Pleasantries exchanged, no seriousity no depth, the point of the exercise really is just to keep reaching out to each other, it's so easy to get out of practice in reaching out, the step before losing one's way, never to recover unless we wake up on the train and find ourselves pulling into Willoughby. So after comparing the mutual weathers (similar), outfitting of the speaking rooms (dissimilar), current times of day (ditto), and the highlights of our fascinating days (ate, stared out a window, watched TV, ate -- in other words, similar), we concluded that we had just about exhausted conversation for now -- brains were not engaging, 'sallright it happens. So we bade each other goodnight, and Andrew said "Goodnight, Daddy."

My fifteen year old son, beginning to tower over me his body stretching out now like Mr. Fantastic, working on his Eagle Scoutship, phone voice deeper than mine, experimenting with loud electric guitars and long distance puppy love friends, movie nights out with his friends (obligatory pizza afterwards of course), careful in public to be seen as Tres Cool, testing the parental leash ever so tentatively but testing it indeed, my beloved young man in the quiet of our solo nights, still calls me Daddy.

In that moment and in his backyard I am richer than Bill Gates. I am still Daddy to my Buddy, and I now know I always will be. God is good.