Son making way in the world 1,200 miles from obsessive dad -- sort of

Henry Frederick and his son, Henry Frederick, IV, on eve of turning 21 / Headline Surfer®SANFORD, Fla. -- My son turns 21 on Thursday.

Little Henry, as I've called him through the years, is 1,200 miles away from me in Central Connecticut -- having made his way in the world a little more than a year ago on his own terms. Sort of.

I seriously flirted with the idea of a surprise visit by flying up just to give him a hug and to tell him, "I love you."

After all, he is my flesh and blood -- my only child.

But who am I kidding? He knows I love him. And he didn't sound overly joyed about dear old dad crimping his style on his 21st birthday. So he beat me to the punch, offering to pay me a Thanksgiving weekend visit. On my dime, of course.

After all,  like my father before me, I have pushed expectations like college since he was little. 

I have stressed to him over the years that when he is of age, he'll have to start thinking about make his way in the world through one of three routes: Go to college, join the military or get a job towards self-suffiency. His decision was a job, any job.

But first, he said he needed a change of scenery, recognizing on his own that he was in a rut with high school in the rear mirtror.

And there wasn't any nagging from me or from my wife of four-plus years, Serafina. He had pretty much lived with us full time a year after his mother and I divorced and Serafina and I were together before marrying.

Henry's life kind of unraveled as the family life he had known just before reaching his teen years started to break apart.

His mother and I had come out of tough situations with the News-Journal, which saw its workforce eventually cut in half over several years and the paper undergoing a change in ownership.

I was working as a city editor at a small daily newspaper in Massachusetts -- between Providence and Boston, flying back to Orlando and then the drive to our Port Orange home when I could -- sometimes every other weekend for maybe two or three days, including travel time in the air and on the road. 

Father & son Henry Frederick III and IV in 1996 at Yankee Stadium / Headline Surfer®It was the only thing I could find that would keep the mortgage going. But after two years, it got to be too much of a burden for all of us and I came back to Florida for good in hopes of salvaging a fractured family situation. But by then, the cracks got bigger and a 17-year marriage was no more.

That was seven years ago when Little Henry was entering his early teens.

Henry' mother eventully lost her job, too, and took an editing job on the west coast of Florida. I had already moved to New Smyrna Beach.

After trying to scrape by at small papers, first at Hometown News for a few months, then the New Smyrna Observer for seven months when it was a daily before folding, my last stop was another nine months or so with the Palatka Daily News as the city hall reporter at pay that didn't really cover the 70-mile drive each way. So I started up the internet newspaper. 

By then, Serafina and I began building on our relationship and we were married on the beach. The three of us were making it work, moving quickly in the new family from a cramped run-down place on U.S. 1 to a much nicer rental home in Sugar Mill.

Then several months before Little Henry's 20th birthday, he decided it was time for him to start charting his own course. And he flew the coop -- literally.

His electronics and clothes were shipped ahead and I drove him to Orlando to catch his flight to early adulthood -- his mother and I splitting the costs.

And just like that, "Little Henry" had moved into the finished basement of his older half-sister's Connecticut home -- a mere 30-minute commute ironically from my alma mater -- Central Connecticut State University.

And soon after Henry left, Serafina and I moved, too. First to Lake Mary and then to our cozy new place here in Sanford with stuff we don't need (like piles of old newspapers unclipped), including what Henry left behind, in storage. 

It was tough in the beginning of the new marriage for Little Henry and for Serafina and me. Henry and I have a lot of the same traits: We are both obsessive and demanding of others. It wasn't easy going from one family unit that Henry and I were a part of in the first 13 years of his life and then transitioning to another family unit for four years. 

He and Serafina got along just fine. The clashing was father and son.

As much as I dreamed of Henry already atttending college and enjoying the experience of the four years and a bachelor's degree like I had 30 years ago, there wasn't that sense of urgency on his part. But he's been working at a Burger King for quite a while after a couple other part-time retail jobs he didn't care for.

Even now, he recognizes what he earns only goes so far and though he's with family, he still has to pay for rent, food and his share of utilitities, as well as his phone.

And what I do find somewhat comforting is Little Henry telling me now and again in our infrequent phone calls that he truly wants to go to college -- and not because it's something I want to hear. For him, it's "still just not right now, dad."

He is starting to mature into adulthood, if you can call it that, on the eve of a 21st birthday.

Little Henry isn't so little any more, but in my heart he'll always be my boy. Just like I am, at age 52 (with Feb. 4 ticking fast) to my own sometimes still demanding father who turned 76 in August.

Time marches on for all of us.

For my son, Henry Michael Frederick, IV, who turns 21 in less than 24 hours of this essay, "I miss you and I look forward to your visit here for Thanksgiving. Happy birthday, son. I love you!"

Editor's Note: HeadlineSurfer.com Publisher Henry Frederick won a first-place award from the Florida Press Club in 2012, for his first-person essay:
 

Father knows best even if it takes half a lifetime to see that.

Posted Sun, 2012-06-17 18:53