For the rest of that awful Saturday and the entirety of the following Sunday, Jenny and I pretty much avoided each other. I did apologize, as soon as we got home and had the car cleaned out, but Jenny just sniffed at me and I knew it would take her a lot longer to forgive. Forgetting was probably out of the question.
Jacob was a different story. When I peeked in on him that evening -- scant hours after my irresistible force had met his immovable object -- I caught him again playing with his trains, an elaborate wooden track snaking in a hundred directions on his bedroom floor.
“Daddy,” he said, not taking his eyes off the long chain of cars he was pulling through a wide turn. “Can we build another race track?”
I knew what he was referring to. I remembered the time we had built a pair of long, sloping tracks and had raced his various engines down them -- and I remembered the tantrum and injuries that had inexplicably followed.
“Maybe later, buddy,” I said, moving fully into his room. “How about we do something else?”
“Okay,” Jacob said with bored ease.
In no time we had built a long straightaway on the floor and were testing how many cars one of his battery-powered engines could pull to its end without being dragged to a stop by the increasing weight.
“How many do you think, Jacob? Five? Six?”
“Fifty!” he chortled with his special kind of glee.
It was likely the biggest number he could think of and, as such, a placeholder for the biggest number there was. I like to think that it said something about the size of his little heart, and its capacity to both forgive and forget. When the little tank engine made it to the end of the track with eight wooden cars trailing magnetically behind it, he clapped his hands and threw his little arms around my neck.
Later that night, in bed, Jenny asked me about it. She had heard us playing together and had decided not to interrupt. But there were things she needed to know. In the dark her voice came stealthily, laced with both concern and contempt. How had Jacob seemed? Was he all right? Was he scarred? Had I broken his fragile spirit with my pig-headed selfishness? These words weren’t said, but they were there nonetheless.
“He’s fine,” I said, deciding to speak my lonely truth in as few words as possible. “And I’m sorry.”
“I hope so,” she said, rolling herself over and presenting her back to me.
I remember laying there in the dark for a long time that night, consumed with worry, sadness, and inadequacy. I didn’t know what was wrong with Jacob -- I didn’t even know if there was something wrong with Jacob -- but I was convinced there was something wrong with me. There had to be. I was broken, had been since I was Jacob’s age, broken and crushed by a world that had no room or sympathy for sensitivity or quirkiness or any but a strict and conditioned understanding of boys and men, sons and fathers. I remember crying, I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I also remember rolling away and stifling my sobs to keep Jenny from hearing them.
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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