My Son Monologue

The sun was right overhead and we had found our campsite in a clearing of the woods. We had been hiking since sunrise.

“This is it,” I muttered.

I would recognize it anywhere. It was the same oaks trees. The same pond.

“The clearing looks like we took it out of 1964, I guess some things stay frozen in time.”
Yes, maybe some things do. Right now, it sure felt that way. It was as if we traveled back thirty years, before it all happened. Yet I barely recognized my son. My scrawny, short son had turned into a man. In fact, he was taller than me, strongly built, with facial hair and glasses. You don’t notice change when you see it everyday. But looking at my son, I barely recognized him.

“We should set up camp,” my son responded. “You’ve always put business first. I’ve always respected that about you,” I laughed.

From a young age, he was serious. Me and his mother called him an “old soul.”
On the yard, the other kids would be running around and playing, but my son, no, he was different. He was always reading. I used to think he couldn’t be mine. I couldn’t even make it through high school! Yet, my son, he knew everything.

Even after I left him and his mother, I thought about him and his intelligence. If my son was that smart, why couldn’t I be. Maybe if I had worked a little harder I could have been. But deep down I knew, I was a screw up father through and through. She couldn’t trust me to do anything. I would show up to his birthday parties and baseball games drunk. I would pick him up from school drunk. I would put him to bed drunk. Sometimes I even woke him up drunk.

I pulled out a cigarette and sat on a log, while my son started to pitch the tent. My health has gotten real bad lately, but I knew I needed to take my son out camping one last time. Those had always been our best memories. Something about being in nature was freeing. The doctors told me camping would be too much, but heck, they told me smoking would kill me years ago! I would rather die in my happiest place with my son than in their damn hospital bed.

“How’d you learn to pitch a tent like that?” I asked. He used to struggle as a child. “Greg taught me,” my son replied. “He taught you well.” “Sure did. He taught me everything I know.”

The tent was made and my son joined me on the log. It’s weird someone could be your own blood and you can know such little about them. Was my son married? Did he have kids? The sun was blazing down on us when I remembered on the hottest summer days we would go down to the pond and take a dip.

“Remember how we used to swim in that old pond, sonny? You could barely swim, so you would hold onto me,” I reminisced. “You would throw me up in the air and I was always scared you wouldn’t catch me,” my son responded “I always did catch you.” “Until you stopped throwing me.” “Did you ever learn to swim?” “Greg didn’t want a son who could’t swim. Either I learned to swim or I wasn’t his son, I picked swim.” “Your mother picked well with Greg. He always treat her right?” “He took care of us and loved us. We couldn’t ask for much more. I am going to go into the pond, if you want to join me.” “I am pretty tired, but don’t let this old man stop you from having your fun.”

I was left alone, on my log.
Over the years, I had grown accustomed to being alone. After I left my son and his mother, I wondered for a while. I got in bits of trouble here and there, couple of bar fights, nothing too serious. I met some girls, no one I loved as much as his mother. Mostly one nighters that helped make the loneliness go away. I spent most of my time alone, drinking. I went in and out of rehabs. I tried to track down my son and his mother one time after many years. I even found they were living. I knocked on the door, and a man opened it. Looking back, I guess it was Greg, but all I knew is he said to me I would ruin their lives if I came in the door. I wanted to see them more than anything, but I couldn’t take care of them like this man could. They had a house with a yard and a fence, two cars; they were living the American dream. I left them, permanently this time, and never looked back. I got into some hardcore stuff around that time and moved around a lot. Eventually, I cleaned up for good. But by then, I was already an old man. It was a lonely
life.

Still, the thought of dying alone was too much. It was like admitting my life was a failure. As a young man, I had thought my life would go differently. I was madly in love with his mother and thought I would marry her. She was my everything. Somehow I became too busy in my fantasies to realize all I ever wanted, the perfect woman and a son, was slipping away from me. For some reason, I thought by taking him here, we would pick up right where we left off. But his life had moved on. He wasn’t some small pathetic being in need of his father’s validation. He had a father, and that father wasn’t me.

I came here to tell my son that his father didn’t have much time left. But, now I realize my son is just another young man, and I am just another old man. We are just two men, and nothing more.