June 18, 2022

 

One day a young boy asked his father if they could go fishing.

His father said, “No not today, son. I'm very busy.” He wasn't really busy. He was drinking.

The next day the boy asked his father if they could go to the circus because it was in town and he wanted to go since he'd never been to a circus before.

His father said, “No, son. Not today. I'd really love to take you but I'm very busy today.” But, his father wasn't really busy today, either. He was drinking.

The next day the boy asked if they could play catch.

His father was drinking and he was becoming annoyed by these constant interruptions so he took a map that was on the coffee table, ripped the map into dozens of pieces, gave it to the boy and said, “When you get this map back together, then we'll go play catch.”

The boy ran off laughing to himself. Ten minutes later he had returned with the map all taped together and showed it to his father.

His father said, “Hey how did you do that so fast?”

The little boy said it was easy. He turned the page over and there was a silhouette of a man. “When I put the man back together, the world came together.”

All my life I had tried to put the world together in the hope that the man would come together. But, I had it all wrong. The world wasn't broken. The man was. I didn't get sober the day I heard this story. I still had another year of hell to go through. But the story stayed with me and when I finally did get sober, I tried to put the man back together. A funny thing happened. The whole world came together. The people, the places, and the things in this new world are not the ones from the old world.

My son is as old now as I was then. There are no fishing rods for us, no circus tents, no catchers mitts. The cat's in the cradle now. We still talk and sometimes we tell each other how proud we are of what the other has become. Those are the moments that matter.