Fighting gravity

Let me down fast, let me down easy

A few weeks ago, my son and I had a little rough patch.

It started with some hurt feelings.

They weren’t communicated in a mature way though, so instead of a conversation, we had a fight.

And then, as often happens in fights, instead of the person calming down, they dig their heels in and behave even less productively.

And then you have a full-blown conflict that takes time to cool, resolve, and move past.

My son and I had one of those.

We don’t have them often. We sometimes argue and bicker - usually about incredibly dumb things - but the little dustups are typically over as quickly as they started. And then we talk it over and “do some housekeeping” to clean up the little spill.

Arguments aren’t just dropped. They are first defused; and then we tidy up the mess we made so there are no hurt feelings left to fester instead of heal.

We seldom go through stretches where we are at odds frequently. And we VERY seldom have a conflict that lasts long beyond the moment and stretches into another day or days.

A big reason for that is that we cut each other slack. Disagreements are just disagreements. They don’t change our relationship nor do we worry they might. As I have been telling my son since he was little, our relationship is like a mountain and fights are just weather.

“Storm clouds may come and go but nothing moves the mountain.”

That’s the mantra I have been repeating to him his whole life.

Our relationship is the mountain. It is made out of rock. It is steady and reliable and trustworthy. It was there yesterday and it will be there tomorrow. There is no weather that could change that.

Still, sometimes we go through some rough weather.

That’s what happened a few weeks ago.

The hurt feelings? They were mine.

The person who expressed them unproductively? It was me.

The person who behaved even less productively once it had turned into an argument? Yeah, that too was me.

Not my best work.

The root of the issue was a combo of circumstances and gravity.

The circumstances: for the several weeks prior, I had seen little of my son. Much, much less than usual. My mother had knee surgery right before Christmas. While I helped out around her house, it was easier for my son to be at his other parent’s. So I didn’t see him much in the days right before or after Christmas.

Then, when we had a one-day window to maybe get out of town for the night, a friend of his was having a big sleepover with all of my son’s other friends. He wanted to go, so I let him… as I should have.

The following week, school was back in session and life got busy again and by the time the next window for some solid quality time rolled around, my son had been invited to an Eagles game. He wanted to go, so I let him…

And then the week after that, something else came up that he wanted to do. So, I let him…

So, instead of having two days of a three-day weekend together, we were down to one. We agreed to really make good use of that one day though. I’d pick him up in the morning and we’d head off and make a fun day of it. I was leaving the next day for a week on the road, so after that day, we were out of windows for a while.

And then he overslept.

Texted him early. No answer back. Texted again. Didn’t get a reply. Didn’t hear from him until the morning had nearly entirely come and gone.

And then I had a full-on hissy.

To me, that one day was my last little handful of sand and a healthy bit of it had already run through the hour glass and was gone… and now I had even less sand… and I had so little sand already… and for weeks, I had just been so wanting to have one handful. Not enough for a sand castle. Not a whole beach. A handful.

And now some had slipped through my fingers because my son had stayed up late and didn’t set an alarm and is a teenager who stubbornly insists on acting like a teenager sometimes.

So I had a little fit. Told him I wasn’t going to come to get him until he had waited for me for a while since he had kept me waiting for hours.

Now, let’s just explore the acute genius of me deciding to choose that particular moment to go all “turnaround is fair play” and “let’s see how you like it.”

I was just missing my son. I was leaving the next day. But instead of just taking the time I still had, I dug my heels in and decided shooting myself in the foot would teach him a real lesson.

And then, unsurprisingly, me acting petulant and punitive did not, in fact, lead to a deep and meaningful life lesson for my teenage son. It led to a more heated argument which I had pretty close to started all by myself. I mean, he could have set an alarm, sure, but he certainly hadn’t intended to oversleep.

And then more of the afternoon slipped away and I was too twisted up to be able to navigate my way out of my own little one-man snowstorm. And then I didn’t get him at all and didn’t see him until I got home a week later.

It makes me sad to type that. It embarrasses me. But if I am going to write about the specialness of a relationship I adore and take pride in helping to build, it would be dishonest of me to not report on the days when it was hard to see the mountain.

I fucked it up.

I was just missing him. I was hurt he wasn’t up for time that felt so fleeting and important to me.

But mostly, I just wasn’t coping all that well with how quickly my son’s social life and interests had grown to the size where it felt like there was no room for me anymore.

Jesus, I am going to cry through the rest of this at this rate. I am a damn malomar. Sure, there’s a hard outer shell but the inside is just marshmallow.

I just wasn’t doing all that great with how fast his life and friends and interests were swelling to fill the calendar until there was little left.

In my defense, it had been a month of one unlucky coincidence of scheduling after another. Things that conflicted with the little windows of opportunity to spend time together every. damn. week.

I had always known that as my son got into high school and then grew farther into his teens, he would have less and less time for me.

I thought it would be a ramp. It was a cliff.

I was not given adequate warning about that.

I really should have been given sufficient advance notice.

So, there we were on the last day before I left town arguing instead of doing something together because my son was acting according to the natural laws of growing up and there I was fighting gravity.

That happens sometimes. I fall behind in adapting to him growing up and make a mess of it and then have to catch up. But I do. I may kick up a storm cloud. But then I go away and think about it and unpack my own shit; own up to my mistakes; and get to work on clearing the skies again.

So, I called my son the next day. Explained all of the above to him at length. How I just missed him and the prior month had made that worse and none of that was his fault but nobody told me there was no ramp and someone should have really told me if there was no ramp because I was NOT prepared for a cliff.

And as has happened every time I fell behind on keeping up with him just growing up like a normal kid, I told him I’d catch up. I told him it was on me to do that and that I would. And then he cut me slack and we tidied up the broken dishes and swept up the last little bits into a dustpan and were okay.

By the next day, we were back to texting like normal every day about things big and small. I sent him pictures from tour and he sent me little updates about his week and sports headlines and things from TikTok.

Toured rolled on and then past… and then I got home to a dead car; had to rent one; and couldn’t get all of that done in time for it to make sense to get him. So it waited another day.

I picked him up from school the next day. We had already done all the housekeeping. But we talked about the little storm for a minute to make sure the clouds had all been cleared.

I apologized again because I wanted to rather than because he needed me to. I wanted to apologize in person. If you want accountability from your kids, ya gotta model it yourself.

And then we went on to talking about his day and my trip and regular life stuff and the week ahead.

Since then, there’s been a bit of a shift though. We’ve made more of an effort to make quality time out of smaller windows. We went to the diner together after each of his soccer practices. And each time, we talked on the way there and then over waffles and bacon and eggs and chocolate milk shakes.

A few things have come up in his life that bumped up against my time with him. I let him go and busied myself with other things.

Part of adapting to your kids’ expanding social lives is expanding your own.

I told him I would catch up. I am. I wish my son’s childhood could last forever… but more than that, I wish his childhood could be healthy and happy and unburdened by a parent who spills their messes on their children.

Making that wish come true doesn’t take some particular magic. It just takes keeping up.

Sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes I fall behind. But then I catch up.

My son is a normal teenager growing up just like every teenager does.

It is me who needs to keep pace.

His social life and interests and activities are growing.

That is the natural order of things.

That is just gravity.

(Someone should have just warned me about the cliff.)