The Procrastinator

27, June 2013

THE MOM:

What’s clear, even after eight months at home, and clean, is that Alex is not quite ready yet to go out into the world and seek his fortune. Yes, he has had the odd creative triumph since he’s been home--composing music for small productions, scoring a short film, and he has had done all with grace, good humour, mostly, and on time, and received plaudits for his efforts. It is the time between triumphs that concerns me.

He is still finding it all too easy to make Reading the Sports Page out on the front stoop with tea and a cigarette last most of the morning, he disappears into the bathtub for extended soaks, there seems to constantly be cricket or rugby or football or golf on TV that needs to be watched. And I see him doing all these things and I say nothing (most of the time).

You can’t keep telling a 25-year-old of relatively sound mind and body what to do.

Well, you CAN, but that defeats the whole purpose of the exercise. I’ve spent years telling him what to do. Look at his track record. Obviously it doesn’t work. Besides which, no one really wants to be told what to do, I certainly don’t, and neither does my mother at 97 (although God knows I try). Alex rebelled against authority as a child and continues to do so now.

However. All this Not Telling Your Kid What To Do goes against your basic instincts because, well, that’s your job. As a mom. So it’s hard. Because just when you’ve had it up to here and really only want to yell “Oh for fuck sakes! Turn off that goddam TV! It’s two in the afternoon!”, you have to either say nothing, or something innocuous like “Gee, who’s winning?”

So I have to approach it all differently. I might ask him, say, at the end of the day, if he thought he’d been productive that day or improved himself in any way, and if so, why, and if not, what might he do differently. But it sounds fake. Not like me.

I now compromise by merely shooting a look at the TV as I fly past with arms full of some project, possibly adding a slight sigh (the kind that could be mistaken for merely heavy breathing if you’re called on it) or maybe raise an eyebrow a little, but this is all guaranteed to elicit a “What’s wrong, Mum??”, because he’s not stupid, he misses nothing, and then I either say “Nothing, honey!” and fake a genuine smile or, more often than not, my eyes fill and I turn quickly and have to high tail it out the door to my shed to feel sorry for myself for a minute.

Whereupon I feel better, but then I have to grab something from the shed to take back in with me so it looks like I went out there legitimately to get something--a nail, wire, ribbon, roll of wrapping paper, salt for the water softener, all of which ends up in the house (and has to go back to the shed).

My life seems to be full of piles waiting to go somewhere else.

Look, most of it’s good, what’s happening around here, I just get impatient. Plus it doesn’t help that his father’s Old Grouch these days, cranky about getting older and not having any work and no money for the tax bill due in July and not winning the Lottery and I love him but honest to God he just doesn’t “get it”, what we’re trying to do for our son, he physically cannot stop himself from nagging Alex from arsehole to breakfast time about has he done this, has he done that, which of course leads to The Exchange of Words and often a full blown argument with Alex mad at DK, DK mad at him, and me mad at both of them.

It’s all so simple. If Alex does not do his prep, does not pass his GED, does not get his Bill Evans audition piece ready on the piano, does not get into Berklee in Boston or Columbia in Chicago, it will be his fault. Period. It will either be a lesson well learned or, my nightmare, send him back down the hopeless path towards using heroin again.

Well, isn’t that a cheery thought. And it’s only 11:00am. Wonder what the rest of the day today will bring. Alex is incidentally doing the math homework his tutor has set for him, as we speak, I just did a crossover through the kitchen, ostensibly for my glasses (no doubt in the shed).