Table of Contents

me and The Kid

Okay. This here’s the intro to my letter to my son. First, a little background.

My son doesn’t live with me. We see each other a lot, and his dad and I are pretty close, but he lives with his dad and his sister (not mine). I’ll blog about that one day, but there’s two things you should know about this situation: one is, The Kid’s dad and I made the decision, not the courts. And two, I have never, ever, once regretted giving The Kid’s father the opportunity to spend time with his son as he was (and is) growing up. He is an awesome man, an excellent father, and seeing them together sometimes brings tears to my eyes. It’s beautiful. There is absolutely nothing that pisses me off more than the societal conception that the mother has to get custody of the children, and how difficult it can be for a father to even win visitation rights. Yet another blog.

At any rate, I have this thing about dying. It scares the hell out of me. Even worse than that, is having someone I love die. My worst fear is that something will happen to me someday and my son will grow up never knowing how much I love him. Even writing about it gets me choked up. I’ve made No N and 1N promise that if something like that ever happened, that they will show him all the pictures and stories we’ve created over the years so that he would have some idea of what I was like.

I also decided, how better to tell him, than to do it myself, in my own words, and hopefully try to explain things to him. My way.

Thinking about my own mom, I see that I see her as “Mom”. I’m sure she has her own story to share, her own opinions and thoughts on stuff, but I’ve never come close enough to find out. Which is sad, in a way. There’s a lot that’s sad about that. Some is explained in my letter.

So two years ago I started something that I later called 100 Miles To Empty. The title came about because one day No N and I were in her vehicle that had a digital gas readout. And we were having some sort of philosophical, deep discussion about something: reaching limits; going as far as you can…and then going further; taking all the crap you can stand. Things of that nature. Listening to music. Finding meaning in everything. You know what I mean.

We looked down, and the gas gauge said, “100 MILES TO EMPTY”. And it seemed to us, that it’s kind of like life. No matter how far you think you’ve gone, or how close to running out you think you are, there are always 100 miles to go until you’re empty.

So that’s really what this is about. Reaching your limits, then crossing them; finding your reserves; grabbing your courage by the balls and making it obey. (Ohh another idea for Fantastic Sex.)

So without any further ado: Installment One.