Foods to Get You Through the Day

Dish One - Uptown Boy and the Downtown Grill

The morning wasn't particularly hot when I've done shaving, rather it was quite a cold day. Nevertheless, I was oozing. My breath was shallow, and I could feel my heart thumped faster than it normally would. I didn't need a medical degree to recognize panic symptoms. However, I knew, I was indeed panicking.

Splashing cold water onto my face, I let out a long exhale. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror above the washstand, "Come now, you can do this. You faced a lot of tribulations before. You've done a lot of 'firsts' before, this one's just the same. It's a piece of cake, it's a walk in the park."

I can hear my own whispering voice giving myself a pep talk, yet I wasn't confident. Those eyes were not the eyes of a tiger, those were distressed eyes of a bachelor boy. And I was neither a bachelor nor a boy. Not anymore.

I was a twenty-seven years old man, four months married. I was an up and coming young startup executive. I was a top university graduate, I finished both undergrad and graduate programs with flying colors. I was invited to a reputable multinational company soon after, only to leave them a year later. I joined some brainiacs to build our own startup, and so far things were on the rise.

The problem was, that very morning, all the aforementioned bragging sounded exactly what they really were, mundane meaningless bragging. None of those obstacles I met in the past could live up to the challenge I was facing right then.

Taking my stepson for a weekend ride.

My wife was three years older. And when I married her, she was already five years a divorcee. She and her former husband shared their only son's custody, so that boy could ambulate between his parents' houses whenever he wanted to. It was an arrangement that worked very well for both the boy and the parents.

The only issue was, when I met his mom, the boy was away for a ten months trip overseas, keeping his dad's company on his long business trip. The marriage itself was sort of a surprise affair. We were introduced by a mutual friend one day, I proposed to her parents three weeks after, and we got married two and a half months later. Her son came home just two weeks before the wedding, and took off the country the day after. Cutting the chase short, to this nine years old boy, I was none but a perfect stranger who married his mom.

Therefore, it didn't really surprise me when he kept a considerable distance from me, even after he got back to the country. He changed his normal stays at his mom's house to mere weekend visits. His stays at his dad's house got longer and longer, like he finally chose to reside there permanently, instead of continuing his ambulatory lifestyle.

My wife was concerned, but she understood. All of us did. We all knew the boy needed some space. He needed time to adapt to me. That was why, his real dad amiably shoved him to our side every time he could, coming two-bites short from blatantly selling me to the boy.

My wife was there every moment I and the boy could gather together on his weekend visits, trying her best to break the ice and bridge the gap. But none worked so far. He was still keeping his polite yet cold distance from me, never warming up.

To make things worse, that very particular Saturday morning, the mom wouldn't be there to bridge the gap. It was a sudden call from her office and she'd be out throughout the day, yet she begged me not to cancel the ride. Hence, it'd be just me and the boy for the whole Saturday ride.

I never knew that a walk in a park and a piece of a cake could be so scary.

***

When I walked out of the bathroom to pick up my parka, the boy was already there, neatly sitting on the living room couch. His hair was sleekly combed sideways, his hoodie shirt was creaseless, even his gakuran jacket was impeccable. His head was bowing, he was wearing earphones, and his fingers were dancing aptly on his handheld gaming buttons. He looked entirely focused. His seriousness looked so mature to my eyes, yet at the same time, he looked so fragile.