just teaching emery to pee from high places

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”-yeats

most mornings at this time of year i get up, turn on some music, set the coffee to brew and start looking through thumbtack for jobs. some, if not the majority,  of these mornings emery is with me reading before school eating his granola dry out of a recycled mustard jar. i look for work here in boise and i am proactively looking for work in seattle as well. trying to to figure out the timing of when soccer season ends, when i am through with my obligation to my commitment to coach and i can really focus on what i am after. i write, you assume, that i am after a place, seattle, but i am not. Seattle, aside from being the place emery was born, maybe the destination but what I am after is an idea, an ideal. Despite what may appear to be a plan its only a direction. I am moving towards something

Emery will be turning 12 in october. While its not even the middle of spring i am already talking about the end of fall because this is a big deal to me. To me its the last third of direct parenting. The final stage before emery heads out on his own. My child will be prepared to go out on his own, step into his brave new world and do so gleefully.

i have learned by watching others that there this an advantage of being a single parent. the parent is used to the schedule of pickups and drop offs. the nights with an empty house; your child's empty bedroom waiting for it to be filled by their laughter, dirty dishes and the debris of clothes on an unmade bed. these nights are very lonely and the only comfort one can find is in the reassurance that one day your child will be better for it. your child will be grown, living on their own and the regularity at which you see them will never be regular again.

when people ask me what i am up to i tell them i am working on moving back to seattle. trying to get home. their immediate response is 'what about emery?'. my reaction is, 'what do you mean?' because everything i do is about emery. anyone who has watched me, known me over the course these last 11 years, should have some clue that every thought and action i make is about emery. i have 6 years left of being a directly involved parent and i want to parent the way i want to parent. i want my child to be exposed to the world and people. i want him to play with the idea of solo travel knowing that at the end of each trek he has a safe destination of his mothers or fathers before those destinations are unknown. i want my child to have the ability to travel to a new location and have the ability to make friends. i want emery to have some street smarts. i want my child to go to art museums with me, performances, cultural events, sit with me on a sidewalk sipping coffee while listening to the cacophony of a city echoed through the canyons of buildings and bookstores. emery loves bookstores. i want my child to know my friends, their children and learn from them. i want my child to know me; because, in parenting you do stop what it is you do and you do make those sacrifices for your child. you do what needs to be done but eventually the most important thing i believe i can do for my child is to be myself. give my child the opportunity to see his dad. anyone who has ever seen me in seattle, with my friends, among my community has seen me. most importantly i want my child to believe in himself, have the confidence he needs to move forward, to live his life and never to have to run from himself. there is no plan. there is only direction and we have our route.