Summertime rules

Summertime rules

I don't remember summertime rules or chores that I didn't give myself.

Once in awhile I'd clean my room or mow the lawn. But it would be out of boredom more than obligation. 

I'd leave home in the early morning and return just before dinner. I'd spend the day riding my bike, miles, and miles on the gravel roads between my past and future. 

My parents always believed I'd find my way. 

My children don't have that kind of secret life, one that is physically distant from mine. Especially now. 

It is afternoon, and my son is still asleep. His room is a clammy, overstuffed pocket of childhood in a north corner of our house. 

The things he's accumulated are archived in piles. He steps over some, drapes others in discarded clothes, the rest is hidden when his creaky old door is wide open. 

These toys from his baby years collect dust under two more sedimentary layers of playthings from his toddler- and boyhoods. 

He's not sentimental; he just has neither the time (he's fighting zombies) nor the inclination to avail himself of space. After all, his teenage self is satisfied with the two-square feet that fit his chair and desktop.

 I'm the one who's too sentimental to clean out his room and decide what fate shall befall the remnants of his playthings. Do they stay in the attic museum, or do they go to the curb, hoping for a ride to another life?

He is 13 now; a teenager still filled with sweetness, but also cultivating a kind of blossoming rage we tend to define as hormones. 

It's a combination we've come to expect, almost condone, in boys.

We have expected as much. 

Three years more than a decade ago, he came complete with a foreskin and so many seemingly unfathomable choices all of them couched in a question of parenting: Do we worry too much or too little? 

We opted for no unnecessary surgeries and anxiety as needed. He would be of the world, yes, but he would also be ours.

Nature doesn't trump nurture. 

But he's not a baby anymore.

It is nearly one o'clock. He is awake and roaming around. Searching for food that I might call breakfast. 

Though I'd be wrong if I were to ask because he would proudly say that he doesn't eat breakfast anymore, he's not hungry until lunch. Toast at lunch is neither meal. It's not even filling. 

He will graze through the pantry, proving his point that meals are a thing of some quaint past.

One-thirty. I have invited him to mow the lawn. It's going to be a hot day.

I shrink a little inside myself, waiting for an outburst or a disappointing response. 

He gives me neither. Just a happy chirp, as if it's no problem at all.

He'll get right to it after a few video games. 

Two-thirty comes and goes. 

Three-thirty comes and goes.

Four ... comes, and he still sits in front of the game with his headphones on moving only his thumbs.

Remember the lawn? You said you would mow it. I don't ask much ...

He's not as cheerful now, but he agrees. The request is not outlandish. He uncurls himself from the game and disappears to find his shoes. 

I do believe he'll find his way.