“I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t mind!”

Last night I was talking to Son 1 over dinner. (You remember that he's working about an hour from here and still sleeping on my living room floor.) And out of the blue he said that on his way home from work he'd figured out how to answer one of Wife's chronic complaints.

"She's always saying, 'You spend so much more time with Dad [that's me] than with me. You must never want to see me!' And the next time she says it, what I'm going to tell her is, 'Look, I live with Dad because his place is an hour closer to my work than your place is. But if I had my own place, I'd see him less often than I see you.'

"And I think that's true. Because if I lived on my own I'd still try to see her once a month because she gets so clingy if I don't — also to make sure she's doing OK and not drinking and stuff. But I'm pretty sure you wouldn't mind if I didn't see you anything like that often! When I was in college we only talked if we had to work out the planning on something."

"Or if you needed money," I added.

"Right, but except for tuition that happened less and less often as the years went on. Then we'd get together over the holidays and we'd talk nonstop for a while. But if I lived on my own you'd probably be fine with my seeing Mom [Wife] and not seeing you."

Was he speculating? Was he asking? I'm not sure. In a sense what he was saying sounds pretty bad: I wouldn't care enough to see you if I didn't have to because I live with you, and you wouldn't care enough to want it any other way. It's a hell of a message. 

And the worst part is that he's probably right. Oh, not because I "don't care" ... I mean ... not exactly. But I don't think I would feel as needy as Wife. I don't think I would feel as forlorn, as bereft, as abandoned as she would feel if I went for a few months without seeing either boy. That is to say, I enjoy both of them. I like to talk to them. I think it's great that Son 2 got in the habit years ago of calling each of us [Wife and me] once a week to check in and talk about what's going on. Sometimes the call lasts 5 minutes, and sometimes it lasts 90. And it's a habit his older brother never acquired. As I say, I like it. I always feel good after talking with him. But if I had to go a month or two without anything more than brief emails sharing jokes, I wouldn't take it personally. I wouldn't mourn. I'd just figure that was how it was, and go on about my day. 

What accounts for the difference? Probably several things. 

- One is that I have a job, so I already have regular contact with other people. 

- I volunteer once a week. (Of course Wife goes to church once a week, so maybe those balance out.)

- When I have the time I write long letters to Marie, though I don't know if Wife has anyone similar in her life. (A few years ago the boys said there was some guy at the other end of the country who would call her daily with his problems, so maybe she gets some of her social needs met that way.) 

- And I'm just better at accepting a new status quo than Wife is. That is, she finds it easy to feel trapped by the status quo, and to believe that The Way Things Are is The Way They Have To Be. But she still hates it. Me, I can adapt to any new status quo and find a way to be happy in it. Hence the new six-word memoir I thought up two months ago, "Sooner endure than confront or change." (Hence also why I realized that it would take desperate measures for me to become sufficiently uncomfortable with my car troubles to buy a car. Fortunately last week I had no car available at all — my dad's old car was having more engine troubles — so I had to walk to and from work each day, three miles one-way up a steep hill. Last Sunday I went out and bought a new car.)

There's one last element that's a little different from the others, because it involves how I see the boys. Wife always felt rejected by everyone, even at times when I was trying to tell her I loved her; and so at some level I think she saw the boys as two people who at the very least were guaranteed never to reject her because it was their job to love her. And her whole approach to child-rearing was built on continuously reinforcing the bond between them and us (or her).

My idea was different. In the first place, I figured that the primary obligation ran the other direction — that we owed the boys more than they owed us. (I pause to note that Plato says the same thing in the Laws.) But what we owed them — in some ways our only job as parents — was to teach them to be self-supporting, independent adults in their turn. If we achieved that, nothing else mattered; and if we failed at that, everything else was just window dressing. So whenever I could, I encouraged them to go out on their own and do things for themselves. It's part of why I insisted they go to boarding schools for high school. It's one reason I was willing to pay through the nose for them to travel abroad with People-to-People as grade schoolers. I have tried hard to be consistent about this one point, even when I had to fight with Wife over it and even when it hurt to see them not need me any more. But I reminded myself that if they didn't need me, that meant I had done something right. 

Maybe I should hear Son 1's remarks as vindication. Maybe I should treat them as a compliment, because they imply that I'm not weak enough to fall to pieces whenever he's not there to hold me together. Maybe I should acknowledge that I really like my solitude, and that — much as I love him! — he's not wrong to think it will take a while before I really miss him. 

Or maybe what he told me is every bit as bad as it sounds, and it's a sign that there is something wrong with me. I recently read that failing to keep up your social contacts is as bad for your health as smoking a pack a day. Maybe I should spend some time meditating on that for a change. 

Maybe I should say "Fuck it all," pour one last shot of tequila, and go to bed. Night-night, all.

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