My son is being a little shit lately.

He’s actually well over six feet tall and seventeen years old, so I guess that makes him a big shit.  He’s stormy, disrespectful, self righteous, ugly and cocky.  He has all the answers.  He’s conniving and manipulative.  It’s super yucky and he makes me nervous.

When we were building our house we used to schlep the kids through the desert every day to witness the progress.  They would run around in the dirt, avoiding ditches, swerving around pipes, to find their rooms or figure out where the kitchen would be.  The build was stressful for us, but the kids loved it.  They were entranced as our house grew up around them.

It was hard to make out a lot of the rooms initially, but once the foundation was in, once the big slab was dried and placed, things started to come together.  All basic plumbing was there, sealed in concrete.

I remember being happy that our foundation didn’t crack, that according to our contractor, who was a lunatic by the way, it was a “great pour.”

Foundations are important, it’s what everything else is built on.  I didn’t want a cracked base.  Everything else can be fixed and we have had a lot of fixing over the past few years.  Our drywall job was not the best.  I’m pretty sure a monkey put our showers in, but those things, with a little extra effort, can be repaired.

Ugly doors, fixable.  Obnoxious, poor choice at the time, paint color is a phone call, or a trip to Home Depot.  Everything above the foundation, no matter how damaged, aged or waterlogged, can be fixed.  Even the roof, the top of the house, can be patched, so long as the foundation, is solid.

When my son was little, he used to hold my hand.  He was a giggler, mess maker, story teller. He sucked his thumb, ran everywhere, and he never listened.  As he got older, he was a jokester, super duper hugger, with a killer smile.  Up until about a year ago, my growing up, almost a man, son was a comic book reader, dreamer, thoughtful almost to a fault, tower of warmth.  He was poised on the brink of something sparkly.

He was a challenge then and he’s a challenge now, but things have gotten ugly lately.

Things need to change, but I know when I lay my head on the pillow at night, I know even when I’m bewildered, disappointed or sad, that his foundation, his childhood, his character, is somehow, somewhere, deep inside of him, still intact.  I don’t talk to him anymore because I’m tired.  I don’t like him lately, but that’s okay for now.  He knows he’s loved.

Hopefully he puts in some new windows, changes that old nasty paint and finds his sparkle again.

My thoughts from the laundry room.  Door Shut.

 

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