I spend three to four hours a day in the kitchen, reading recipes and labels, chopping and mixing, cooking and cleaning. My boys don’t usually snack, so when they come home after school and sports practice, they need to feed immediately or they start rummaging around in the fridge and cabinets like pigs hunting for truffles. They eat plenty and with gusto. I have thought about setting the table with trowels instead of forks. Most of what they eat is pasta, rice and beans, stir-fries, crock-pot stews, broccoli, and chicken a hundred ways. I try to cook healthful meals from scratch, so it’s gratifying (though sometimes shockingly repulsive) to watch them eat.
I complain every once in a while, when I can’t seem to sling the hash quickly enough or when there are too many dirty dishes on the counter to even see the counter. But then I realize I am so fortunate to have working kitchen, to enjoy cooking, to be able to buy groceries whenever I want, and to have two healthy boys with appetites. It could so easily be otherwise; for many it is.
My other main non-cloud-related duties are driving my younger son around and waiting for older son to letting me know he has arrived home by his 1 a.m. curfew. Most of the transportation logistics is handled through texting. My younger son sends me a message “Pick me up?” five days a week at the same time when he is finished wrestling practice. I pick him up in the same place every time, so there is no need for a conversation or any reply more than the “K” I send him.
My older son uses one of my favorite four-letter word: home. I read this word on weekends, mostly, around 12:56 a.m. right after the ping of my cell phone. Luckily, he does not drink or use drugs, so my husband and I do not have to wait up for him to look at his eyes, smell his breath, or listen for slurred speech or bizarre responses to questions such “Did you have fun?”
When I was a teenager, I had to wake up my mother and let her know I was home. This usually involved my standing over her bed whispering “Mom” over and over, a little louder each time—but not loud enough wake my dad. If she was snoring, I had to bend down and whisper “Mom” right near her ear. This startled her awake, and, upon seeing the silhouette of a person two inches from her face, caused her to cry out a panicky “wha—whaa—what?” while she figured out that I was not a burglar but a daughter; then not a daughter telling her the house was on fire but a daughter telling her that she was home safely. We performed this routine at least one night a week for four years. I don’t think she was necessarily checking my sobriety; talking face to face was how things worked in the early 1980s.
Since our late-night routine inevitably woke up my father, I decided that I would devise a different plan when my own children were old enough to need curfews. I had read long ago (before cell phones) in a parents’ magazine of a system in which the parent sets the alarm clock for the curfew time. If the child arrives home by curfew, he or she turns off the alarm and the parents sleep through the night. If the child is late, the parents are awakened by the alarm and deal with the problem then. This seemed reasonable to me, but then I realized nothing would prevent my son from coming home, turning off the alarm, and heading right back out.
So we text. Most Friday and Saturday nights, I put my cell phone by my bed, sleep until the ping wakes me, see the word “Home,” reply “K,” (really short for “okay”), and fall back asleep. You can hear a pin drop in our house, and I’ve never heard him heading back out in the wee hours.
I complain every once in a while about the driving and the interrupted sleep, but then feel really spoiled about complaining. I am grateful for two boys who are participating in team sports, enjoying friends, having a social life, not breaking curfew. It could so easily be otherwise—and given that I have still a few years to go until they fledge—it might be. In just a few years, when both boys are off at college, I will likely miss the “good old days” as a part-time chauffeur and curfew enforcer, days when I knew where they were and when they’d be home, safe in bed.
This past weekend, my life as a mother of teenagers became a very short poem, perhaps even a one-letter koan. While fiddling with my cell phone, I noticed I had a few months’ worth of text messages. Before hitting the delete key, I scrolled down though the received messages:
And then I scrolled down through the messages I had sent...
Pick me up?
Pick me up?
Pick me up?
Pick me up?
Pick me up?
Home.
Home.
Home.
...and then to my replies.
K
K
K
K
K
K
K
K