Before Dementia: Part 3 – His father’s boy

Our son, Jackson, was a little wonder. We’d given up hope that we’d have a second child and had let the years accumulate without pining too much for the wished-for number two. We lost track of time. We had a healthy daughter and she was our world. 

We moved from San Francisco when Maddie was 7. Robert took a job with the public school system so that he’d have the same schedule as our daughter. He worked, but from Maddie’s perspective, he was her mainstay. He was home when she was. He was available for chauffeuring to playdates, to soccer or basketball practice, to theater camp, and to Taco Bell (she lived on bean burritos for two years). 

A late arrival

Jackson was born when Maddie was 10 years old. He arrived at the perfect time for all of us. Maddie was Robert’s raison d’etre, and she was growing up and away. I was home with Jackson for six months after he was born. When I returned to work, Robert quit his job to be home with Jackson for the next five years until he started Kindergarten. 

Joined at the hip

They were peas in a pod. Robert joined a dads’ group for stay-at-home fathers. The dads took the kids to the beach, camping, and on endless sightseeing excursions in the city. In the living room, Robert and Jackson built trenches of overturned chairs, reinforced with pillows, to ward off the onslaught of flying plush toys in the Beanie Baby Wars.

Brooms and dust mops became the weapons of choice for massively dangerous sword fights in the kitchen. Super soakers were the instruments of superb summer showdowns in the backyard. And after each frenetic afternoon, Jackson would wind down the day with a summons to our full-size bed, “Dad, let’s wrestle!,” the last of his energy flushed out through his sweaty little head. Jackson loved Robert. At age 3, he had a hard time starting preschool two days per week, because he missed his “best boy” so very much. 

Jackson’s first word was “ball” and from the time he could walk, he was chasing his big sister around the soccer field. He joined a team when he was five, and Robert became his ever-ready challenger on the pitch. They played for hours against goals imagined between the trunks of the triad of redwoods on the church lawn across the street from our house. After a formal team practice, they’d head to Whole Foods for a cherry vanilla soda, Jackson’s favorite. 

Indoor play and an oops

One rainy winter afternoon found them playing 1 v. 1 soccer in the house. We’ve always given the kids the run of the place. It’s had so many incarnations as a burrow of tunnels, a sprawling metropolis of legos, and a pirate’s graveyard replete with unexploded ordnance. (Watch out!) The one rule in the house was that balls stay on the ground.

But on this inclement day, the soccer ball was flying. It bounced off the back slider, ricocheted off the stove, side-glanced the couch, and then crashed into a framed Picasso poster hanging six inches off the ground near the front entry. The 2’ x 3’ frame shattered. Jackson panicked. He did not want me to come home and find this destruction…one caused by breaking the one rule we had for inside play.

Robert calmed him down and assured him that accidents happen…that’s why they are called “accidents,” and not “horrible things done on purpose”. They cleaned up the glass, jumped in the van, and drove to the local Michaels store for a replacement frame. They rehung the poster and I was none the wiser…for over ten years!

Jackson was always very active, but he was also terribly sincere and respectful even as a boy. Perhaps his wise beyond-his-years demeanor was in part the result of being the youngest in a family where there were no other “children.” But I honestly believe this kind, old-soul boy was a product of a father who never bored of him, who was always available, and always loving. Jackson is the young man he is today because Robert is his father. Full stop. 

This Robert is the man we have loved. This is the man we are losing.