A day with my boy
This has been a very normal day, nothing special to write about. But it occurs to me that normal days with my son are pretty rare these days. I scheduled "Monday: take S.B. clothes shopping" some weeks ago. I put it in my google calendar and invited him and he accepted via Google. That's the way we talk sometimes in our family.
We did a normal chore: returning bottles and cans to the redemption center. It was an abnormally large amount because we hauled them back from the island this week (since we took the truck on, since we were delivering a table to the island.) We got $28.80 for the cans.
I took him down to Marshall's, where we sometimes find cool styles. Not this time.
Lunch was at Panera Bread, and it cost $28.83; the change I had in my pocket from redeeming bottles plus three of the pennies I keep finding on the ground.
I took him to Old Navy where he found pants that fit - that's a good thing, and hard to do. He's tall and slender, wearing a 30x32 pant this year. He didn't like much, so we left and went to buy shoes. Then we stopped in at Barnes & Noble for a moment. Do you know that S.B. has a picture of Tesla hovering over his driver's license picture in his wallet? He's a big Tesla fan. I saw a book on Tesla moments before he saw it, so I grabbed it first to save for a Christmas present.
Coming out of the bookstore we realized that neither of us wanted to do much more clothes shopping, we mostly just wanted to go read books. We decided to go back to Old Navy and get the almost-good-enough outfit he'd rejected earlier.
Then we went to Staples for school supplies, and then we had just a few minutes for JC Penney where we got him some nice shirts (and I got a new nightgown.)
Then off we flew to get home, because he's on the executive council for student council this year and he had a 5:00 meeting.
It wasn't a particularly special day. But I'm thinking about how I was checking out of Marshall's and being sort of hungry and eying the trail mix blends at the register and S.B. saw me doing that and told me it was time to go get lunch. I love being with people who can read my mind, who are just *in tune* with me like that. All of my children have that ability and I'm ever so happy to be around them. It's an easiness that I long for in my life. That's a big part about why I miss C. (my grown daughter) and Eldest Son so much. Being around them is so sweet, it's such a relief, a solace to be where people just grok me and I'm okay. Not perfect, but not awful. Being around people who just generally think and act like me. I miss having family so very badly sometimes.
So a day with Small Boy at seventeen is tinged with foreshadowing. He, too, will be moving away soonish. My time with him is fleeting. The sheer normalcy of taking a kid clothes shopping has a weird overlay as a super-angsty drama-laden Last Fall Clothes Shopping Trip feeling about it. I'm not saying this very well. Words fail me. But my grown kids know what I mean.
We did a normal chore: returning bottles and cans to the redemption center. It was an abnormally large amount because we hauled them back from the island this week (since we took the truck on, since we were delivering a table to the island.) We got $28.80 for the cans.
I took him down to Marshall's, where we sometimes find cool styles. Not this time.
Lunch was at Panera Bread, and it cost $28.83; the change I had in my pocket from redeeming bottles plus three of the pennies I keep finding on the ground.
I took him to Old Navy where he found pants that fit - that's a good thing, and hard to do. He's tall and slender, wearing a 30x32 pant this year. He didn't like much, so we left and went to buy shoes. Then we stopped in at Barnes & Noble for a moment. Do you know that S.B. has a picture of Tesla hovering over his driver's license picture in his wallet? He's a big Tesla fan. I saw a book on Tesla moments before he saw it, so I grabbed it first to save for a Christmas present.
Coming out of the bookstore we realized that neither of us wanted to do much more clothes shopping, we mostly just wanted to go read books. We decided to go back to Old Navy and get the almost-good-enough outfit he'd rejected earlier.
Then we went to Staples for school supplies, and then we had just a few minutes for JC Penney where we got him some nice shirts (and I got a new nightgown.)
Then off we flew to get home, because he's on the executive council for student council this year and he had a 5:00 meeting.
It wasn't a particularly special day. But I'm thinking about how I was checking out of Marshall's and being sort of hungry and eying the trail mix blends at the register and S.B. saw me doing that and told me it was time to go get lunch. I love being with people who can read my mind, who are just *in tune* with me like that. All of my children have that ability and I'm ever so happy to be around them. It's an easiness that I long for in my life. That's a big part about why I miss C. (my grown daughter) and Eldest Son so much. Being around them is so sweet, it's such a relief, a solace to be where people just grok me and I'm okay. Not perfect, but not awful. Being around people who just generally think and act like me. I miss having family so very badly sometimes.
So a day with Small Boy at seventeen is tinged with foreshadowing. He, too, will be moving away soonish. My time with him is fleeting. The sheer normalcy of taking a kid clothes shopping has a weird overlay as a super-angsty drama-laden Last Fall Clothes Shopping Trip feeling about it. I'm not saying this very well. Words fail me. But my grown kids know what I mean.