Today is Diego's eighth birthday. We had a nice evening here at the house with a cake and gifts.
My father put my main gift of a bike to shame with this brand-new VR headset. I was shocked for two reasons. For one, he never bought me any video games because according to him "they rot your brain". Second of all I felt Diego was a bit young for one of them, but I decided it was not my place to make an argument. Pretty soon I'd be asking him to be Diego's guardian after all. Who was I to knock his parenting.
After we ate the cake Diego went crazy playing with his gifts only to crash an hour later. It must have been all the sugar. I carried him to bed and had a relaxing conversation with my father out on the deck. In fact, I almost told him about Europa. I stopped myself though. It was too nice of a moment to ruin.
I did jokingly mention the VR headset and he assured me that the damn thing comes with parental controls. He also talked my ears off about the educational opportunities and mentioned how young exposure to the technology increases children's hand eye coordination. I pointed out that I could have used that as a child, and he poked back at me with the line "you weren't really the sports type." He wasn't wrong. I did mention to him how I'd started working with a personal trainer.
He also mentioned that he was considering moving up to D.C from Texas, mentioning that it was hurting him to see how much Diego was growing between visits. It did assure me that he'd be happy to watch over Diego while I was gone, but it also reminded me how my boy would basically be an adult by the time I returned home.
I could not stop thinking about that for the rest of the night, as much as I tried to enjoy the time with my father. Other than that, thought, the only other thing that spoiled tonight was seeing a comment on a picture of Dad, Diego, and I sitting around the cake from Diego's ass of a father.
It read "Happy B-Day Bud!" He really put some effort into that one. The least he could do was call the kid. That's what pissed me off so much about Alex, all the half efforts. I honestly think it would have been better off if he genuinely forgot and sent a make-up message a month later.
Anyway, I bit my tongue and said thank you. What else could I do?
YOU ARE READING
Europa
Ciencia FicciónIn order to embark on a mission to discover alien life on the icy moon of Jupiter Maria must leave her life on Earth behind, including her father and her seven-year-old son Diego. She thought the hardest part of the mission would be saying goodbye...
