I started with the photograph.
It seemed like the safest place to begin.
Michael had been standing in our kitchen, holding a pie he had ruined because he thought he could improve on a recipe.
I told Nathan how his father had insisted the filling was perfect.
I told him how Michael had tried to scrape the black crust away without damaging the rest.
I told him that he had eventually eaten a piece himself, mostly to prove that I was being unfair when I said it tasted terrible.
Nathan laughed at that.
Then he asked what Michael had been like when they were younger.
I had to think.
Not because I had forgotten everything.
Because I had spent so long avoiding the memories that I had forgotten how to tell them.
“Your dad was stubborn,” I said.
Nathan smiled.
“Like Grandpa?”
“Very much like Grandpa.”
He glanced toward the chair drawing.
“Did they always work together?”
“Whenever they could. They argued about measurements, tools, and the right way to fix things.”
“Who was usually right?”
I smiled.
“Your grandfather would say he was. Your dad would say the same thing.”
Nathan laughed again.
I watched his face while he listened.
He was trying to build a picture of a man he had lost when he was too young to remember much.
Every detail mattered to him.
The way Michael laughed.
The way he handled a mistake.
The way he behaved when something didn't work.
I had once thought that the important memories were the big ones.
The wedding.
Nathan's birth.
The holidays.
The photographs we had kept in albums.
But my son wanted the ordinary details.
He wanted to know what his father sounded like when he was annoyed.
He wanted to know whether Michael had been good at fixing things.
He wanted to know whether he had made mistakes.
I realized that I had been trying to preserve a version of Michael that was too difficult to talk about.
I remembered him as my husband.
The man I had loved.
The person whose absence had changed every room in our house.
Nathan needed to know him as a person.
Someone who burned pies.
Someone who built crooked furniture.
Someone who made promises about finishing projects and sometimes took much longer than he expected.
Someone who had been alive long before he became a memory.
I told Nathan about our first apartment.
It had been small, with a kitchen that barely had room for two people to stand in it.
Michael had decided to build a table because he didn't want to spend money on one.
He had measured the space, bought the wood, and spent several evenings working on it.
The finished table stood unevenly on the floor.
One leg was shorter than the others.
Nathan laughed when I told him.
“Did Dad know?”
“He knew something was wrong.”
“Then why didn't he fix it?”
I shook my head.
“He said he would.”
Nathan grinned.
“And then?”
“Then he started another project.”
He laughed harder.
I laughed too.
For a moment, we were simply a mother and son sharing a funny story.
We weren't discussing the lie.
We weren't arguing about the workshop.
We weren't trying to decide how to live with grief.
We were talking about Michael.
And that was enough.
After a while, Nathan looked at the drawing again.
“Do you think he would have liked the chair?”
I didn't need to think about that one.
“He would have loved it.”
Nathan's smile faded slightly.
“I wish he could have seen it.”
“So do I.”
I didn't try to make the sentence easier.
There was no way to make it easier.
Nathan returned the drawing to the box.
Then he asked whether I remembered anything else about the workshop.
I told him about the first time I visited Frank's house.
I told him how Michael had shown me a shelf he was building and spent twenty minutes explaining why he had chosen a particular piece of wood.
I told him how little of the explanation I had understood.
He laughed.
“That sounds like Dad.”
“It does.”
I was beginning to understand why Nathan had wanted to spend time with Frank.
His grandfather could tell him stories I couldn't.
He had known Michael as a boy.
He had watched him learn to use the tools, make mistakes, and develop the habits that followed him into adulthood.
Those memories belonged to Frank, too.
I had treated our estrangement as if it could remain separate from Nathan's relationship with his grandfather.
It couldn't.
My disagreement with Frank had never changed the fact that he was Michael's father.
And Nathan was Michael's son.
He deserved to know both sides of his family, provided the adults around him could behave responsibly.
That didn't mean I had to pretend Frank had done nothing wrong.
He had knowingly allowed two teenagers to deceive their mothers for eight weekends.
He had failed to consider what might happen if something went wrong and neither family knew where the boys were.
We still needed boundaries.
But boundaries didn't have to mean silence.
I closed the box and placed it beside the bed.
Nathan stayed seated.
“Can we go back to Grandpa's house again?”
I looked at him.
The question was careful.
He wasn't asking to disappear for another weekend.
He was asking whether he could return to the place where he had found a connection to his father.
“Yes,” I said. “We'll arrange visits properly.”
He nodded.
“And you can keep working on the things that matter to you. But you have to tell me where you're going, and you have to answer your phone.”
“I understand.”
“And no more asking Cole to lie.”
“I won't.”
I studied his face.
He seemed sincere.
That didn't mean I was ready to trust him completely.
It meant I was willing to begin rebuilding trust.
The next day, I spoke to Denise again.
I told her Nathan had apologized for putting Cole in that position.
She said Cole had accepted the apology, although he was still upset about the way everything had happened.
I understood.
Friendship didn't make the lie harmless.
The boys would have to repair their relationship, just as Nathan and I would have to repair ours.
We agreed that there would be no overnight visits for now.
The boys could spend time together, but both mothers would know where they were.
If plans changed, they would tell us.
It sounded simple.
It should have been simple from the beginning.
I also called Frank.
I told him that Nathan needed him, but that he couldn't help him by encouraging secrecy.
Frank listened.
“I understand, Laura.”
“I need you to understand that I'm not trying to keep Nathan away from you.”
“I know.”
“He needs his grandfather. He also needs to know that the adults in his life can tell the truth.”
Frank was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “You're right.”
I wasn't ready to forgive him for everything.
But I accepted the apology.
We had spent three years allowing one painful argument to determine the shape of our relationship.
I didn't want another three years to pass before we learned how to speak to each other.
A few days later, I found Nathan in the living room.
He was looking at the drawing of the rocking chair.
I had placed it on the table after taking it out of the box.
He picked it up when I entered.
“Could we put this somewhere safe?”
“Of course.”
He looked toward the hallway.
“Maybe near the chair?”
I considered it.
The chair had become more than an unfinished project.
It was a reminder of what Michael had wanted to make for his son.
It was also a reminder of what Nathan had done to finish it.
And it was a reminder of the conversation I had nearly missed because I had been too frightened to open an old box.
“We can find a place for it,” I said.
Nathan nodded.
He placed the drawing back on the table.
Then he asked me another question about his father.
I answered it.
I didn't know every detail.
I didn't pretend to remember things I couldn't remember.
When I needed time to think, I told him so.
When I felt sad, I didn't immediately change the subject.
It was uncomfortable.
Sometimes it was painful.
But the conversation continued.
And for the first time in years, the memories of Michael were becoming something Nathan and I could share without either of us feeling that we had to hide what we felt.
Source: kaylestore.net
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: When I Returned to the Workshop With Nathan, I Stopped Trying to Decide What We Could Save and Started Asking Him What Each Object Meant
I Thought My Son Was Spending His Weekends With His Best Friend Until One Phone Call Made Eight Ordinary Fridays Look Different
Part 6 of 12
