(Originally posted in Facebook on June 12, 2019)
Yesterday was our younger son’s birthday. Not sure how we’re old enough to have a 27 year old son (!) but there he is. So I was talking to him (he’s in CA) as I was walking in the house from work last night, thinking M would walk into the kitchen, as he always does, and join the conversation.
M was nowhere to be seen.
I continued talking with our son on speakerphone and walked around the house. M wasn’t upstairs in the bathroom. He wasn’t in the backyard cutting the grass. Finally, I found him downstairs, watching TV.
I didn’t smack him in the back of the head and grab him by the ear to come upstairs (where the cell reception is better) to talk to his son, but it was a near thing.
After we got off the phone, I asked him why he didn’t come upstairs when I had come in the door, like he does EVERY SINGLE EVENING, FIVE DAYS A WEEK?
His answer – “I didn’t know.”
Didn’t know what? Who was walking in the door? Who I was talking to? What was going on?
I guess any one (or all) of those questions could be the one.
I just shook my head.
Then, before we went to bed last night, I remembered to go to the freezer and get out some meat to thaw for a Keto-friendly dinner tonight. As I walked out of the pantry, with the zip-lock bag of steak in my hand, M asked if it was for the dogs.
No – I haven’t started buying steak for the dogs yet – but I guess we could start.
I smiled and said no, it’s for us.
I also asked him about the position he’s looking for at work – if he had gone to HR and spoken to his friend, as I suggested. No, he went back to the new manager and asked him about it . . . again. After the new manager had told him to stop asking.
Sigh.
I (almost) wish I could clone myself and be there at work with him to guide him and keep things like that from happening. But there’s nothing I can do. When his time there is over, it’s over.