The astro-naught years

I knock on the door.

There is no response.

I can't tell from the hallway, but I imagine he is cuddled up in a chair with headphones on, tapping away at a keyboard and oblivious to my would-be intrusion. He is probably floating through a world of graphics and gizmos that he and all of his virtual friends are tethered to by bright blue cords, like the one that spirals from his computer, out of his room and down the stairs before it slithers into the snakes' den of wires in a closet nearby.

I turn the knob and crack open the door slightly, careful not to breach his space with anything more than my curiosity. Privacy is to a teenager what piracy was to a toddler. Something of mythic proportions.

The air stabs at me in little prickles as it spills into the hallway.

"Hello!" I venture again.

From behind the door, a strange figure leans into the light. A chair creaks under his shifting weight.

"Hello," he says in response. “I'm fine. How are yooooooou? …. And yes, I will mow the lawn today.”

I hadn't asked any of those questions. But he is aware of the boundaries of our expectations and how to stay inside of them, mostly.

Cocooned in a blanket, my son is at his desk, which is surrounded on all sides by towers of dishes in various states of uncleanliness. His clothes carpet the floor.

He has found a way to keep his room from assaulting him with the earthy smell of foot funk: Air conditioning set to a subarctic temperature.

I wonder when icicles will begin forming on the edges of surfaces.

A part of me, the part that has a sense of smell, rejoices slightly while the parts that fret about electricity bills and the costs to the environment pretend to be occupied with inspecting the flooring.

If I were his father I might be breathing fire into that room. Melting his chill with the heat of patriarchal pragmatism: "You might be wasting your time by doing nothing all this summer, but you won't be wasting my energy. I fill the tank, you don't get to crank."

But I'm not good at bringing that kind of heat.

I remember being a lethargic 14, lost in the plots of fictions of dubious merit, while the people who paid my bills were pleading with me to find something better to do with my time.

It's hard to convince a person that all nothings aren't created equal. Some nothings are everything.

So the easiest way to appease them was to disappear. Take a walk, or the bike, and find a place to be out of sight and out of mind.

It's not much different now except I'm the one expected to find something better to do with his time. Not to mention that a kid being out of sight makes parents go out of their minds.

So I try not to worry about the world opening up behind his closed door. I'll just keep knocking until he lets me in.