ALARMS

Remember alarms?
Remember the coffee routine before the day started?
Remember making school lunch or planning a dinner that was "regular'?

I miss getting the automated call from the High School telling me my kid was a few minutes late.
I miss picking him up at school and talking/not talking in the way you do with a teenage boy.

I miss yelling at him to get up! I miss being bossy in that way that seemed meaningful.
I miss knowing that he wouldn't sleep all weekend because he had basketball.
It stinks that it's my job to create some normal in this abnormal world.

I'm the mean one: I'm the "tardy" call.
I'm his new badass, his new mean teacher, his tough couch.
Now, I am his crappy new routine.

The girls have settled in easier than him: home-college is not so bad.

He? He misses everything so fundamentally and physically, I can feel it in the way he smiles and jumps around and goofs off and then seems so sad.  He is sixteen and stuck inside.

Tonight, he said to his sister, "I think God doesn't want me to be a Varsity athlete."

This was interesting to me because the GFYO wasn't raised with religion.
This was interesting because even for the GFYO the world feels wrong.

Remember alarms?
I think I have to blare some everyday: WAKE UP!
Let's hit the hoop! Let's study music for ten minutes!
Let's make some waffles and talk about history!

Maybe I can remind him that when the alarms go off, the world will be okay or okayish?