"Family is not an important thing. It is everything." - Michael J. Fox
Jacob went back to his own place about an hour ago, carrying all the leftovers from tonight's dinner. It is bitterly cold today so his dad picked him up to come home for Sunday dinner. He brought the groceries I have been gathering for Jacob all week as well as the lion's share of the big pot of chili I made this morning. At least I know he will eat well all week.
Tonight's visit home was just his second since he moved a month ago. I had one brief dinner with him mid-week a couple of weeks ago. My laptop died and try as he might when he came home for his first dinner visit, Jacob could not revive it. So he took out the hard drive, backed it up in two places and took everything downtown with him so that he could upload all my data to my new computer. The next day, I dropped my new laptop off to him and picked it up five days later.
He has been poor at communicating with me in between those events. When I drove him to the subway after our first visit, I told him how hard I was finding it to have so little communication with him. He promised to do better, he just didn't do it. So after another long stretch of silence, I decided to try again, this time with a little humor. I sent him a text that said "86,400". He soon responded with a question of what that number represented. I told him it was a puzzle that he would have to figure out for himself. It didn't take long for him to come up with the answer. There are 86,400 seconds in every day. My next text was "20". That was a little harder for him and I finally had to give him the answer. It takes 20 seconds to text "hello" to your mother. We've talked a bit more often since then.
Redefining the daily working of our relationship is a work in progress. We managed to do it when he went away to school. We'll figure it out again.
