My son has lived across the country for about ten years now. He moved not long after I retired, and I understood why.
He had a great job out there, a wife, four kids, two dogs, and a whole life opening up in front of him.
I was sad when they left, but I was proud too. You don’t raise a kid to stay in your living room forever. That’s the whole point of doing it right.
Recently, though, getting older has made me do a kind of math I wish I’d never thought to do. I started wondering how many more times I’ll realistically see my son in person. The answer was not a number I liked.
It started with Thanksgiving and ended with a number I couldn’t put down
We were on the phone talking about whether they were coming this year, who was hosting, what the kids were doing. Nothing emotional. The logistics of who’s bringing what and whether the kids have a game that weekend.
After we hung up, I started counting.
Maybe they come here every other Thanksgiving because some years they go to his wife’s family. Maybe I visit once in between. Maybe there’s a wedding or a graduation that gets everybody together.
Then I started putting years against it. I’m 75. If I’m lucky enough to have another ten good, healthy years, and we see each other roughly once a year, that’s ten visits.
Maybe less if life gets in the way. Maybe more if I make it happen.
I remember staring at my hands and thinking, that’s it?
Ten fingers. Some of them were already curled in. The number fit on two hands, and two hands suddenly felt very small. I put the thought away and went to bed. It came back the next morning before the coffee was ready.
Nothing had changed except how I listened
My son lived in the same place. We talked every week or two. He hadn’t become any farther away than he was the day before I did the math.
But the calls felt different after that.
If he called while I was in the middle of something, I stopped rushing him off. If he told me some long story about a coworker I’ve never met, I listened harder than I would have a month earlier.
I asked about the coworker’s name. I asked what happened next. He sounded surprised that I was still on the line.
I found myself wanting to ask one more question instead of saying, alright, I’ll let you go.
He started noticing. The other day he said, Dad, are you okay? You sound different lately.
I told him I was fine.
I didn’t have the heart to say, I’ve been counting how many times I might get to see you before I’m gone. That’s not a sentence a son needs to hear on a Wednesday afternoon.
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The last thing he needs is his father turning visits into a countdown
He has four kids. A demanding job. A marriage that needs his attention. Bills, a household, a life that runs on him being present for it.
He should be focused on all of that, not sitting across the country worrying because his father has started doing mortality math over breakfast.
And he didn’t do anything wrong by moving. I would have told him to take that job again if we could rewind ten years. I meant it then. I mean it now.
The sadness is mine to deal with. That’s what fathers do. You hold the thing that would make your kid’s day heavier, and you don’t put it down where they can trip on it.
But pretending I don’t miss him doesn’t help either. I miss his voice in the house. I miss the grandkids being close enough to show up unannounced.
I miss being part of the ordinary days, not just the ones that require a plane ticket. I miss knowing what his kitchen smells like on a Sunday.
So I carry it. Quietly, mostly. I don’t want the number to become something he feels responsible for. The last thing a good son needs is his father turning every phone call into a reminder that time is running out.
I hate flying, and I’m booking a flight anyway
I hate everything about air travel. Anything longer than a couple hours and I spend the whole trip wondering why human beings decided this was a reasonable way to get somewhere. The seats are too small. The air is stale. The coffee is terrible.
But I’m booking a flight to see him.
Maybe I go twice next year instead of sitting here waiting for everybody to come to me. Maybe I stay a little longer when I get there. Maybe I stop treating the distance like a permanent arrangement we’ve accepted for a decade.
The math scared me. But it also woke me up. I’d been treating the distance like a fact, when part of it was a choice I was making every time I didn’t buy a ticket.
I can’t make time unlimited. But I can stop sitting at home hoping the next Thanksgiving works out.
I can get on a plane I don’t want to board and go sit in his kitchen and watch his kids do their homework and complain about the coffee while his wife laughs at me. That’s not a visit I can have over FaceTime.
The number might be wrong, and I’d like to be the reason it is
I’m 75, not gone. There are still holidays to plan. Flights to gripe about. Grandkids who are growing so fast I barely recognize them from one visit to the next.
Phone calls where my son tells me far more about his job than I understand, and I stay on the line because his voice is my favorite sound in the world.
The number on my hands could be wrong anyway. People live to 90 now. People live longer than their parents ever imagined. I hope I’m one of them.
But I’d rather be wrong because I saw him twenty more times than right because I sat at home waiting for the next invitation.
I know not every parent can get on a plane. Money, health, caregiving, mobility, and family circumstances can make distance much harder to close.
And nobody should start treating every goodbye like it might be the last one. That’s no way to enjoy somebody. A goodbye should feel like a pause, not a period.
The point for me was simpler. Once I realized time was finite in a way I could count, I didn’t want all the responsibility for seeing each other to sit on my son’s side of the country.
I haven’t told him about the calculation. Someday I might. For now, when his name comes up on my phone, I answer differently.
I’m less likely to say I’m busy. Less likely to rush. More likely to tell him what I’ve been meaning to say, even if it’s small, even if it’s only I’m glad you called.
And pretty soon, instead of hearing his voice from three thousand miles away, I’m going to get on a plane I do not want to board and go sit in his kitchen.
I did the math once. Now I’m trying to make the answer bigger.
Editor’s Note: “As Told to Bolde” stories are inspired by reader submissions, interviews, and accounts shared with our editorial team. Details are often changed, combined, or dramatized, and our editors use AI tools in the writing process. See our Editorial Policy.
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