My Boy

Pt. 1

It is… difficult, to be a father.

I never expected to be one so soon. I thought that by the time I was raising my boy, I would be old and wise, guiding him through each phase towards adulthood. Instead, every day is a struggle, always wondering which path to take, what actions will help him and which will hurt. I walk a tightrope in darkness, and I have no idea where to step. But I am pushed ever forward.

My boy gets into trouble. He has a temper that I cannot quell, and arrogance that I cannot diminish. He hurts others carelessly, but strikes out with rage when he is hurt. His is the only world with meaning. It tears my heart apart to see how blind he is.

My boy is a burden. I pay for each of his thoughtless acts, with money and apologies and endless labor. I work day and night to fix what he has broken, and when I am done he has broken once more. He does not know what pain he causes me, but that thought offers as much despair as it does comfort.

My boy is taxing. My friends tell me that I owe him nothing. That he has thrown away everything I have given him. They say that he is old enough now for me to cut him off, to cast him out to fend for himself. They tell me that my boy will never change, that all my effort will bring me only pain. Sometimes I believe them.

Tonight my boy is in custody. He robbed a store and fought the officers when they came to stop him. This is far worse than anything he has done before, and it is my fault. I raised him, and I raised him badly. It is difficult to be a father.

Every part of me screams to cast him away, to leave him to the mercy of the law. I am tired of my mistakes, tired of having to choose paths in the dark. My boy is hopeless. How can I change him, when he is so much like me?

Pt. 2

I have felt the things he feels. I had a temper that could not be quelled, an arrogance that could not be diminished. At his age I joined the army, eager to hurt without care and never believing that I could be hurt, for this world was mine. I was proud. Proud of my weapons and my armor, and proud of the shining ships that carried us to battle. And then my pride was shattered, when we fought the humans.

They were not the first race that I had fought, but they were matched to us like nothing I had faced before. For every human we killed, I lost a friend, and I suddenly knew how easily my world could end.

I fought in five battles, and each one broke me more than the last. And then I was captured, and waiting for an execution that I knew I deserved. I had killed so many of them. My death would not even begin to repay my thoughtless acts.

But my death did not come, and I could not understand why. In my world, pain was repaid in kind, and I knew how much pain I was responsible for. Why would they leave me alive?

I was still in bewilderment when they brought me home, when they freed my comrades. When they declared the Reconciliation Act. When I was one of those selected for the program, for veteran soldiers to adopt the orphans whose parents they had killed.

I held the strange infant in my arms. I looked into his wide blue eyes, and I knew that this was my repayment. This was my second chance. This was my boy.

Pt. 3

I arrive at the station not long before sunrise. My boy sits on a bench, flanked by two officers. He cannot meet my eyes for a long time. I talk to the officers, to the store owner. Then I go to him.

He finally looks at me. There is sullen anger there, but also fear that I had not seen before. There is arrogance, but now I see that it is a brittle shell, hiding the uncertainty beneath. There is defiance, but defiance of the injustice he feels, and the loneliness that is neither his fault nor mine. And I know that to leave him now would destroy him.

I pay the fines. I make the apologies. I embrace my boy, and the strength with which he returns it lifts my soul and mends the wounds he has given me.

My boy is not of my blood. His face is not like my face; his form is not like my form. We share only the merest fraction of DNA. But I see so much of myself in him that it fills my heart to bursting, with pain and joy in equal measure. He is my forgiveness. He is my price and my prize.

He is my boy.