THE VASE

THE VASE

My oldest son was a difficult child.  He wasn’t a bad boy, he never got into any real trouble, he didn’t break things or backtalk.  He was a difficult child.  He never got into trouble at school; I never got a phone call about his behavior.  Growing up my oldest son was a good kid, he had a good sense of humor, he was a polite kid, he was well liked, but he was a difficult child. 

He was a difficult child because he always seemed to know what he wanted, and he would not give up until he got it.  If you wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do, it was like pulling teeth to get him to do it.  Even in his early grades, his twenty minute homework assignments took hours and often were not completed.  I remember getting angry because he kept erasing perfectly acceptable first grade handwriting, and doing it over and over again.

He was not a good student.

My oldest son was a good athlete, but he did not excel at team sports.  It was as if he was afraid to let his teammates down and sometimes was afraid to try.  Individual sports, skiing, skateboard, tricks on a bike, he always would impress me with his ability.  In an individual event he could practice and practice without fear of letting anyone down but himself.  Eventually with all the practice, he would excel. 

I used to joke that my oldest son was unable to operate a lawn mower, but he could ride a bike around the block on one wheel.

Suffice to say, my oldest son, Mike, was a difficult child.

Mike was not a “look at what I can do” kind of kid.

When my oldest son graduated from high school and turned 19 he was not ready for college.  He did not want to go to college.  He wanted to go to Colorado.  He went to Colorado.  He went with minimal help from his father.  I don’t know much of his life for the next 10 years.  I married a woman who did not want me to know my own children.  She was a bitch for that, and I was an ass for not telling her to fuck off when it came to my children.

About a year or two after Mike went west, I moved to another house.  While I was packing, I found a vase in Mike’s room.  It was a very cool vase, but I wondered what Mike was doing with a vase.  Inside the vase I found a certificate.  It was a certificate for first place in a county high school art competition.

My first thought was, “That little prick, he does something that I can be really proud of him and he never told anyone.”

Who knew he had any artistic tendency.

My oldest son did go to college after many years of being a Colorado ski bum and I don’t know what else.  He went without any help from his dad.  He graduated with a degree in Graphic Arts and after several years struggling in a very difficult profession is now doing quite well working with a well known ad agency.

I have since learned that people with an artistic bent tend to be perfectionists.  It explains why Mike took so long to do homework even in his early grades. If it was not neat enough, if it was not perfect, he did not want to hand it in. 

Mike is now living on the west coast.  He has visited east a few times and I do keep up with him more these days. Neither of us is very good with phone calls or letters; there is Facebook.

Several years after I found his award winning vase, it slipped through my fingers and broke into several large pieces.  I have never felt so bad about breaking anything in my life.  It may as well have been a Ming Dynasty artifact.

I feared the vase was symbolic of my relationship with my oldest son.

It is funny the things that mean the most to you in life, especially as you get older.

Several weeks ago after a significant snow storm I got a rare phone call from Mike.  He wanted to know how I shoveled my driveway and walk. 

“Do you shovel or have a snow blower?”

“Mexicans.” I answered in a truthful albeit very un-PC way. “The condo association takes care of all that stuff.”

“That’s good. I was just wondering, because shoveling snow can be very dangerous at your age.”

“No, I’m good…Thanks!”

That call and his simple concern made  me realize, though I wish I had not dropped it, sometimes a vase is just a vase.