Dylan's questions

Dylan was doing a class project this last week and wandered into my room and sat on the opposite end corner of the bed and began to ask me questions, prefacing the questions with a, "can I ask?".
"Sure!" I said and pulled myself up to sitting while putting down the book and taking off the reading glasses.
"They are questions about what you know about relationships."
Relationships?..Like..marital, dating and other relationships?
"Yes."
"Oh honey.....I am the worst to ask..nothing has ever worked out for me...I have been, well.. an utter failure....".
Nonetheless, on he pressed, asking about his father and myself, of which I skirted around the issue, avoiding the long drawn-out so distant ago story of me spending seven weeks in a women's shelter with the three boys and  how it must have affected them. They were five months, seventeen months and just shy of three years in age. There are things about that time that I still push down and back and instead, 'keep on the positive'..what else can you do? Nonetheless, when you have a seventeen year old (just barely eighteen) asking you questions, what can you do.  "You father is a very good dad, always has been and he has soo many good qualities, he just wasn't a very good husband." Was the answer to which he shut the topic up (closed tight) and moved on. The other questions he asked, I could theorize about with the preface, "but I don't really know, but what I've seen (in others).....".

So we sat on my bed and talked for a time. He was a conscientious listener, asking questions, making notes. Because the marriage between his father and myself was..well, not good, we talked more about his grandparents and great-grandparents marriages. The things known. The things they told me (secrets shared?). He asked my opinion about what constituted/constitutes a good relationship, a good marriage?  What does?  I can only guess...

the Dyl. Senior year. (lord I loves this boy..)..