Fall Down

It's the first of October and while it's officially been Autumn for a month this past few days have actually felt like it for the first time.

The leaves are becoming red, yellow, brown and brittle. When the sun catches them as it did on my regular weekend run along the Tees to the Barrage and back, they and it are beautiful. Providing a welcome respite from introspective ennui.  I realise I'm not that much fun to be around of late, having something of a one track topic of conversation, and if you think it's tiresome to read, try living it.

If I was always miserable and melancholic that would be one thing but I used to be a happy go lucky individual and while I enjoy the odd moment of levity today, that's pretty much all it is.

Like another famous procrastinator, 'I have of late, wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth'.

Not that I'm stamping around the house like a hungover Gruffalo you understand. Vince and I have a lot of adventures and fun on a weekend and after school, playing with his friends, going swimming and to the park.  His natural good nature and energy have been a real tonic when my own sunshine levels have dipped into the doldrums.

I imagine this is similar to what people who have partners in jail go through.  Contact limited to the whims of Governors/Skype; no guarantee of visits, future release and reunion a distant, out of focus mirage, missed birthdays, events and unseen memories dropping by like those self same leaves and an inevitable weakening of the essential bonds that hold you all together in the first place.

It's Vince and Stacey's birthday next week. I feel like a louse and a bad, inattentive husband for missing hers so I can't begin to approximate how she feels to be missing her son's.

All the while the nights draw in, the leaves keep falling, the breeze begins to rise and while the only sound in my front room is the ticking of the New York Skyline clock I bought the other week, time itself seems to be immobile.

As frozen as the literally powerless flat-screen tv on the wall that waited until it was firmly in a position of responsibility before giving up the ghost. A replacement is on the way and everything will be back as it was soon.  Jam tomorrow again but everytime I wake up I find its today instead. 

30 Days of Stacey

Apologies one and all for the scarcity of posting recently.

As well as finally moving into our new home, literally over the street from Vince's school,  my wife came over to visit for the summer holidays.

The last time we were all together was in April for my cousins wedding in Edinburgh and since then Vince has made a lot of friends at his new school, become a regular on the birthday party circuit and grown about a foot.

I've found a job, put on a little weight but am more relaxed/nonchalant about it than I've ever been, started running eight miles by and over the river Tees each weekend, started going to Speedway and Football with Vince, gained a new nephew, Lucas, and after six months have reacclimatised to life back in the UK.

What I haven't been able to handle well is turning 40,more on that later Mr Freaking Original, and living without my wife and Vince's mum.  My parents have been and remain a big help here but it's taken some adjustment to becoming a temporary* single parent. 

That's why this trip was so good for everybody. Vince and Stacey got to reconnect, she got to move into our new place with us, she got to finally meet Vince's friends parents but of course, after the jetlag had cleared and we were finally getting used to being around one another again, she has to return to the States.

Vince has taken it better than me. He can have his attention bought with toys, trips to the baths and playhouses and the promise of more toys but I'm struggling. It's not that I can't do this alone, it's I don't want to.  Vince needing his mum plays better to the audience but I'm missing my best friend. Even with the miracles of Skype and social media, what happens to friendships, and even marriages, when they are unattended and atrophy?

Things have got real too quickly. I feel like the last man on a bobsleigh team who slips over, doesn't make it into the sled in time and careens down the slope on his backside while his teammates are snug, safe and whizzing on ahead without them.

If this is 40, you can damn well have it back. I don't want it.