Father-and-Son Time Winding Down

It is almost over. After fifteen days, Mom will be back from Japan tomorrow.

I would not want to be a single parent on a regular basis, but I have to say that this was a wonderful experience for me.

I treasured all the time I had with my son, and tried to enjoy every minute of it.

It helped that Kai was very well behaved during this time. He barely had any moments where got angry. He was mostly calm and happy, other than when he was missing Mom, of course.

I doubt that it would have been this easy for me had we had tried this a couple of years ago. But, Kai has come a long way.

I felt comfortable taking him to the grocery store with me. He was happy to pick out some items, and never made a fuss or created a scene.

I was relatively stress free the couple times I took him to a restaurant for dinner. He waited patiently for his food to arrive and ate his meals nicely.

He was a joy to be with in all of the activities we did – from our regular visits to the library to our special activities like going to the movies and playing miniature golf.

Perhaps as recently as two years ago, I doubt that I would have felt comfortable taking Kai out in public to these places all by myself. But as he has made much progress, so probably have I as a parent as well.

On our last father-and-son day, we went miniature golfing one more time. This time, Kai was all smiles, even as we got behind a large group and had to wait several minutes on each hole.

After we got home, Kai was thinking of Mom, and wanted to finish a ‘Welcome Home’ banner that he had started with one of his therapists last week.

It was funny that in one part of the banner, he created a “contract” to Mom from he and I. I asked him what the contract was for, but he couldn’t really articulate what was on his mind. He said something about being a family, so I am surmising that it has something to do with all of us staying together, and no more trips away for Mom.

Note that on the contract, he insisted on using my wife’s name, but he and I are referred to as “Kai & Dad Fukunaga.”

As Kai was getting ready to go to bed tonight, I told him that Mom’s plane was just taking off in Tokyo. It will be landing here just about the time he gets to school in the morning. My wife has promised to pick him up at school in the afternoon.

Kai seemed a bit skeptical that Mom was really on her way home. I reassured him that she would be home tomorrow, but I don’t think he will feel secure until he sees her.

Then, he will be a very happy kid.

And I will be happy for him.

But I will always remember these past two weeks as a time when I got to know my son better, spent a bunch of quality time with him, and had some of the best Dad moments of my life.