Life with the boys

I’m struggling with my emotions, but I don’t even know for sure how or why.  Everything about my interaction with the boys seems overpoweringly normal, even in those spots where there is friction.  But it leaves me feeling anxious and irritable.  Or maybe those aren’t the right words, I don’t know.  It’s nothing that overmasters me – I can still smile and exchange a hearty “How are you?” with my neighbor, and I know from experience that if I just let my feelings alone they will get distracted and wander off and decay in time into something else.  But it is recurrent.  And while it’s there, it disturbs me.

We’re talking about little things.  Son 2 snapping at me and speaking to me like I’m an idiot when he’s fidgeting endlessly with something and I take it out of his hands (although now that I reflect on it in peace and quiet I can see that of course he was right because I should ask him to put it down rather than grab it).  Son 1 announcing that he is going to Wife’s house Wednesday morning (12 hours earlier than planned) instead of in the evening after dinner, to help her pack the house when she has done next to nothing in the last month (although I can guess that this plan grows out of his constant willingness to lend a hand, his awareness that she really doesn’t have any idea how to face the process alone, and his basic compassion).  Son 2 making himself a greasy snack and then getting a paper towel to rest it on as he sits down at the table.

“Why didn’t you get a plate?”

“Because I was going to take it back to the bedroom where Son 1 is playing computer games, but then you were standing right there and I figured you wouldn’t like my carrying something greasy into the bedroom.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t. It would be nice if you would have thought about that even withoout my standing there.”

“Would you rather I had just answered ‘I don’t know why I didn’t get a plate’?”

“Ummm, … no, I guess not.”

“OK then.”

What else?  Honestly, I can’t remember.  As I sat at the kitchen table after the boys had finished dinner, I felt really low, crazy-talk levels of low … felt, in fact, like maybe it would be better just to send them to live with Wife and not split their time between us … or alternately felt that that would be the wrong thing to do but that it would be a struggle not to.  And now, no more than an hour later – after I distracted myself by washing up the dishes and booting up my computer to write you – I can’t for the life of me remember why I felt that way.  I know that while I was sitting at the table I was trying to tease apart the components of my feelings, and that I found some sprinklings of fear or anxiety, a large dollop of self-pity, and some other ingredients that I couldn’t place.  But now I don’t even remember why I felt that way.  It’s kind of crazy.

Meanwhile in other respects they have been exemplary.  Both of them have been working at my company, and the managers they work for (not me) are consistently happy with their work.  Son 1 made dinner tonight … what’s more, he made a recipie that he himself invented last week while staying at Wife’s, just by experimenting: pork chops sauteed in onions, plus lemon and lime juice. He has taken to cooking as something he enjoys, at least insofar as it is a key to eating a variety of foods.  For example, he will regularly make himself a quesadilla or two for breakfast, where Son 2 contents himself with a peanut butter sandwich unless I feel like cooking him an omelette.

I don’t know why I’m complaining.  I can’t remember what I’m complaining about.  But my emotions are being a little volatile.  I think I had better remember that and watch them ….