October 23, 2010
In the past week, Eric applied for college, went to the DMV to renew his license and registered to vote. I intentionally chose (not) to help him with any of these activities by staying out of his way. After all, if he hopes to successfully navigate the rest of his life, the time is right to make sure he's in his own driver's seat. Besides, my real fear in helping someone who is on the verge of leaving teendom is that he may never want to leave my house. And I definitely want him to leave my house. . .eventually.
Despite wanting him to pack his bags down the road, it's hard not to love Eric. And, even in the midst of a senior year laden with hefty responsibilities and the added stress of an impending future that just may matter to him, I find that it's also hard not to like him. This is a pretty astounding statement to make, if you ask me (and, by the way, Eric isn't asking me).
This week, Eric also bumped into some disappointing aspects of life as a U.S. adult. He learned, for instance, that, in order to vote this year, he'd have to register for a political party he didn't exactly support. For the time being, then, he's an ass, I mean a donkey, I mean a Democrat. Not that he is a Republican, mind you. It's just that he'd have preferred options along the lines of "Socialist" or "Democratic Socialist." Alas, when the party you most want to attend isn't issuing official invitations, you must compromise.
As an unapologetically compromising person myself, I'm okay with this life lesson dished out to him. After all, when I first registered to vote in 1979, I, too, had to choose a party I didn't necessarily agree with--Republicans--in order to be able to vote for Independent presidential candidate John Anderson. Hey, we've all been to bummer parties before. . .
And yet, since then, I've crossed party lines more times than I've crossed my "t's" or dotted my "i's." (It's possible this says more about my handwriting than it does about my political leanings, but I don't think so).
If all goes as he plans, Eric will be in Sweden sometime this summer, traveling alone to a country whose language he's been learning this past year, even if no one in Sweden actually speaks it anymore. If all goes as he plans, he'll also spend a year studying in that frigid country of endless nights and gothic music (a lethal combo platter for me, but--hey!--I'm not ordering!).
If all goes according to the tiny, selfish voice in my own head, he'll still be living in his bedroom with its outdated "cloud" painting and overstuffed underwear drawer well into his 20s. I'm rooting for the higher-minded, longer-visioned me, though, the one that wants to step out of the way so that my most excellent 18-year-old son, Eric Carlson Holt, may truly find his way in this beautiful, complex and compromising world.
No comments:
Post a Comment