New skills

I’m turning a corner, I tell you what. Last week, when the dreaded password change prompt popped up on my screen, I stopped what I was doing, changed my password, and cached the new password so that my password and smart card logins would sync. I do this every two months or so, but I usually wait until the last possible minute, when the old password is either about to expire or (God forbid) when it has already expired. I told myself that I was a no-drama, no-nonsense person who just takes care of minor shit when it needs taking care of, rather than panicking and procrastinating and avoiding until doom is inevitable; and I believed myself for a minute. 

I don’t know if this post looks different or not from the reader’s end, but the text editor and back end are different because I also switched to the new Blogger while I still had a choice, rather than waiting for Google to force my hand. This is an unprecedented level of reason and good sense. Who knows what I will do next? Call a doctor when I’m sick? Clean in response to the presence of dirt rather than as a compulsion? The sky is the limit. Anything is possible. 

*****

You know what I can’t do? I can’t stop trying to tell my son what to do. At 19, he should be starting to manage his own life but he is struggling with this; struggling with how to manage school and work and getting out of bed at a reasonable time of day. I can’t stop hovering over him, asking him about his plans for the day, reminding him about what I think he needs to do, encouraging him, exhorting him, pushing him. It’s too much and I know it’s too much but I can’t seem to shut myself up. We’re driving each other crazy. 

My sons and I are very close. We always have been. The lockdown has been hard on both of them, but in different ways. Last fall, my older son was taking classes, working part-time, and managing everything well. And he was happy. And then all of a sudden, the pools closed, so he didn’t have work; and all of his classes moved online, and that was a disaster for him. He’s retaking a class now. He’s starting to learn how to deal with the lack of hands-on instruction, but if he has to take a full semester of online classes again in the fall, it’s not going to go well. 

And I feel helpless; helpless to help him. 

*****

So it’s the next day now, and my son straightened some things out, and figured some other things out. He drove his brother to a swimming quarry near Baltimore, and so they’re both out of the house today. And that’s been a big part of the problem all along. He’s the same boy he’s always been and I’m the same obsessive-compulsive insane neurotic that I have always been, but we’ve been in each other’s faces for four months and it's too much. One or the other of us had to get out of the house for a bit. We need to be out from under one another’s feet. 

Tomorrow, I’m going to try something altogether new. I’m going to let him do what he’s going to do, figure it out on his own, without any interference or “helpful” advice from me. This approach runs counter to my instincts; this is how I know that I”m probably on to something. I’ll report back at another time.