It was 10 years ago today I moved to Florida. It’s amazing what can happen in a decade.

I can clearly recall my first drive down Gatlin Boulevard into Port St. Lucie. The nervousness and anticipation I felt as I got closer and closer to the house my estranged wife had rented but did not want me to move into when I arrived. When I had driven away from Rhode Island the car’s heater was blowing full blast, the ground was covered with snow and I was wearing a heavy jacket. Now, as I drove with the window open, I squinted into the sun and was wearing a light t-shirt and sweat pants.

The feeling of walking to a house my wife and children occupied that wasn’t mine as well was an unusual one. I felt like an outsider; someone who might have broken in through a window in the middle of the night and was slinking through the shadows.

That feeling in no way compared to the reaction I got from my son. He was only 2 and a half years old and I had not seen him since his mother took him and his older brother to Florida for “a visit”. We had talked a few times on the phone but to a child of that age the phone doesn’t really register. See him again was the reason I had worked three jobs for the previous five months and why I had driven 1300 miles away from my home. I came through the door and could hear his little feet pattering quickly towards me. My heart raced in anticipation. As he rounded the corner I could a first see excitement and happiness dancing across his face as he raced to see who was coming in the door. However, the moment he came around the corner it all changed.

In an instant his faced dropped. His smile disappeared and a look of puzzlement took its place. I could see the wheels turning as he looked up at, what to him at that moment, was an unknown face. My son had forgotten what I looked like! I think I could actually hear my heart break. It didn’t last forever, of course. His 32-month-old brain finally connected the right neurons and put my face together with the name “Daddy”. Just to see him looking at me as if to say, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?” was enough to completely wilt me.

I took him in my arms and hugged him tightly. Then I tried doing something which was “just ours”. I don’t know when or where it started but Johnny and I got in the habit of head butting. Sort of our version of male bonding. It was the cutest thing to see him pull his head back to “wind up” before swinging his little cranium against mine. He always laughed out loud when we did that. I bumped my head against his and immediately got the same momentary look of knowing what we were doing but not quite remembering. I was curtly informed by his mother that, “We don’t do that anymore!” Apparently, he had tried this on a younger cousin of his and knocked the smaller kid flat on his butt. Silently, I cheered in parental pride but, given the circumstances, conceded.

Knocked him right on his ass with a head-butt……how cool!