Back At Work
I've got a little freelance gig and I spent all day yesterday working, so no blog entry. How good it feels to be doing something instead of concentrating on myself!
Adam is back in school. I was worried about driving him away by being sick, but Saturday, Bob was out and I was lying down and I got a phone call. Adam knocked and brought me the phone and there I am in bed, no hat, wisps of hair like some demented and ancient creature stuttering, 'Give me a minute,' but he doesn't.
He waited while I took the phone call and then plopped down on the edge of the bed. He just wanted to talk about his dad. He wanted to know if his dad was unusually distracted or if Bob was always like this and Adam just never noticed. Well, Bob can be distracted but he has been worse lately (holidays, me sick, everythign topsy-turvy) and I told Adam that he wasn't the only one who had noticed. We talked for awhile and then Adam wandered off to get farther on Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Adam is very much not a touchy kid--I would say he has spontaneously hugged me maybe half a dozen times and most of those were when he was eight or nine. But as he walked out in the garage to leave for college Sunday, he turned around and held out his arms and walked back and said, 'Hug.' And gave me a big hug.
I am always underestimating him. Does everyone underestimate their kids?
Adam is back in school. I was worried about driving him away by being sick, but Saturday, Bob was out and I was lying down and I got a phone call. Adam knocked and brought me the phone and there I am in bed, no hat, wisps of hair like some demented and ancient creature stuttering, 'Give me a minute,' but he doesn't.
He waited while I took the phone call and then plopped down on the edge of the bed. He just wanted to talk about his dad. He wanted to know if his dad was unusually distracted or if Bob was always like this and Adam just never noticed. Well, Bob can be distracted but he has been worse lately (holidays, me sick, everythign topsy-turvy) and I told Adam that he wasn't the only one who had noticed. We talked for awhile and then Adam wandered off to get farther on Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Adam is very much not a touchy kid--I would say he has spontaneously hugged me maybe half a dozen times and most of those were when he was eight or nine. But as he walked out in the garage to leave for college Sunday, he turned around and held out his arms and walked back and said, 'Hug.' And gave me a big hug.
I am always underestimating him. Does everyone underestimate their kids?
posted by Maureen McHugh at 11:14 AM
4 Comments:
Good for Adam and the last-minute hug! I hope he didn't rub your pate for luck.
I think the pendulum swings both ways; I am constantly surprised by my kids--their generousity and intelligence and flashes of maturity. And then, at that moment when I think one of them is able to cope with something--pfthbt.
Adam sounds like a solidly good kid. And that hug may have done him as much good as it did you.
Maybe we just need to give them more ops that enable ennobling?
Probably. But like Madeleine said, sometimes he surprises me in the other direction.
One time, when he was fifteen and three months from his driver's lisence, I got a phone call from a neighbor, asking me if Adam was with a girl from the neighborhood. It was January and it was, I don't know, seven degrees outside. And the girl was his best friend's girlfriend. My first thought was, 'What could they be doing?'
The neighbor said she knew this was none of her business, but did I know they were in the middle of the pond with a sledgehammer?
He explained he was testing the ice.
I wondered if I'd ever survive him getting his driver's lisence.
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