{"id":71642,"date":"2025-08-14T02:20:35","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T02:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/?p=71642"},"modified":"2025-08-14T02:20:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T02:20:36","slug":"on-the-first-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/?p=71642","title":{"rendered":"On the First Day\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"512\" height=\"640\" src=\"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/image-465.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-71643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/image-465.png 512w, https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/image-465-240x300.png 240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Before dawn, I ironed my son Lucas\u2019s shirt for his first day of first grade, wishing my husband, Travis, shared my excitement. He was asleep on the couch, hungover, and brushed me off. Lucas had been asking for weeks if Daddy would be there, and I promised he would. At school, Travis arrived late, disheveled. I left briefly, then returned to hear Lucas\u2019s teacher call him \u201cJamie\u201d\u2014and watch him respond without hesitation. Travis brushed it off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After class, Travis announced a sudden \u201cfather-son\u201d trip to Grandma\u2019s. Suspicious, I followed their car to a nice house I\u2019d never seen. Lucas ran to the pool while Travis kissed the woman on the porch\u2014his son\u2019s teacher, Jenna. Lucas later told me Travis had asked him to pretend to be \u201cJamie\u201d to make Jenna happy; she\u2019d lost her own child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The betrayal was staggering. That night, I went to Travis\u2019s mother, told her everything, and made it clear I was done. I kept the house, custody, and my dignity. Travis lost his wife, and I swore no one would ever call my son by another name again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/?p=71539\">ALSO READ&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before dawn, I ironed my son Lucas\u2019s shirt for his first day of first grade, wishing my husband, Travis, shared my excitement. He was asleep on the&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71644,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71642\/revisions\/71644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/71643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}