The Last Summer

After my ex-wife and I finalized our divorce, I wrote an essay to my young sons about what was going on so they could read it when they were old enough to understand.

This essay first appeared in “Things I Learned About My Dad … In Therapy,” an anthology of stories about fatherhood edited by Heather Armstrong.

Dear Boys:

Hello from August 2007, in New York City. You might think that was a strange opening, since we live together and see each other every day, but the fact is you’re not supposed to read this for a while yet. You’re only five and two, ages best kept for punctuating your speech with words like idiot and poopie, respectively. This isn’t meant as much for you as it is for FutureYou, who live in the marvelous World of Tomorrow. Or in a Scorched, Dystopian Hellscape, depending on which movies you believe.

How is the future, anyway? Is this “book” a rare relic of a bygone age? Are you thinking back to a simpler, pastoral time, before all information was shared wirelessly using osmotic “Google MemBrains” affixed to your temples? Are The Simpsons still cranking out new episodes?

Back here in 2007, the last few months have been pretty sweet. I work as a teacher, so I’ve been off work since the middle of June and home with you as the family’s primary boytender. And for the past ten weeks, the three of us have shared a wondrous and rare opportunity: The chance to wake up every day in New York City and ask, “What’ll we do today?”

The answer is, a helluva lot. We played about 1,000 innings of dingerball (which is what baseball would be like if the only possible hit was a home run). We went to the aquarium, the zoos, the museums, the water parks. We took swim lessons. We explored the distant planet Freezo (a.k.a., the fridge) with our LEGO battle cruisers. We read books, drew pictures, watched a few bajillion episodes of “Dirty Jobs,” and built a contraption that sorts golf balls using dryer tubes and duct tape. We baked a chocolate cake, for Chrissakes.

There were also momentous events. TwoBert started using the potty, quasi-reliably. A-Rod hit his 500th home run at Yankee Stadium, and we were there, four rows off the field. We saw…

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