My 16 year old son Peter has lived in Wisconsin his entire life. My name is Nick and I live in Colorado.
One of life’s tangled webs landed me in a long distance fatherhood situation that despite its inherent heartache – became the biggest blessing in my life.
The love of a father for his son conquered all obstacles in “figuring out” how to build connection over geographic expanse.
A friend recently pointed out that many families living under the same roof don’t necessarily have atunement and connection. Between professional careers, social medias, video games and the myriad of other societal distractions and disconnects – some families lose touch with the importance of true one on one quality time with their kids.
The blessing of my situation has been that the quality and depth of the relationship with my son evolved from a commitment at his birth to be “present” in his life. Although our time was limited to 4 four day visits per year for his first 8 years – we enjoyed uninterrupted joy together.
The attached pictures were taken last summer when Peter came to Colorado for two weeks. We packed the VW “Thing” with camping equipment – whistled for our Dog and hit the open road west into the Rockies and eventually south into New Mexico. We disappeared for 8 days and saw some amazing beautiful landscapes following our mutually adventurous souls without an itinerary or calendar. We chugged through Minturn, Leadville, Aspen, Carbondale, Crested Butte, Lake City, Silverton, Telluride, Durango, and eventually into Ojo Caliente New Mexico.
The great outdoors and the open road tend to land one outside of cell phone and texting “range” . Funny how our cellphones whereabouts became unknown after awhile…
On the road – without all the buzzy distractions of everyday life – a sense of connective “nirvana” happens between father and son by way of quality conversations, spontaneity and humor – all intertwined with comfortable silence affording the time and space to absorb and reflect. To truly “feel” the love.
Quality father / son time on the road is like nice warm maple syrup over a delicious hot pancake
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