Go Get Your Shoes.
I keep thinking about when Dylan was eight, nine – maybe ten, and a recurring situation that happened nearly every day.
Dylan would be in the kitchen, finishing his meal or done building with his toys. It would be time to go – somewhere – and I’d say, “Dylan, go get your shoes.” And Dylan would go upstairs, presumably to get his shoes.
But then Dylan wouldn’t come back.
Sometimes I would call him back downstairs, and he’d meet me in a flash – still in bare feet, or socks – with a book in his hand, or a toy, or a shirt. Sometimes it was his shirt that he’d taken off. But he didn’t have his shoes.
Sometimes I would go upstairs, and I couldn’t find him. He’d be in another room entirely, nowhere near his shoes, inventing a new way to shoot paper clips down the hall or sorting rubber bands in the dry bathtub.
Sometimes I would go upstairs and he’d be in his room near the shoes. These were exciting moments for me – until I realized that he was actually digging through a pile of monster trucks that he’d found under his bed and had no intention of getting his shoes.
We were always late; Dylan was always late. He rarely, if ever, got his shoes when it was time to get his shoes. And he never put them on fast enough to get to where we needed to be on time.
Eventually, as he got older, he learned to throw his shoes and socks in the car and put them on as he rode.
Ten years went by in an instant.
Dylan came home from college for Christmas and suddenly, we were late for everything again. Bill, Shane and I would be sitting around with our coats on, and Dylan would be doing something – no idea what – but he wouldn’t be ready to go.
Dylan’s version of “getting ready” is to be awake and then spend three hours doing whatever he wants, which may or may not include a 45-minute shower, wearing shorts and flip flops in a snowstorm, or texting 75 of his closest friends – all while we wait.
I have no idea how much of his behavior is related to ADHD, and how much is related to me spending the first 18 years of his life waiting, and reminding, and prodding.
I wonder sometimes if I had said, “Go get your shoes” and then gotten in the car – would he have shown up? Would he have come back with those shoes immediately – could he have come back with those shoes immediately? Or would I still be sitting in the car all these years later, while Dylan does whatever Dylan gets distracted doing – while the rest of the world whirls around him?
Maybe it’s worse now, since he’s had no one prodding him for four months. Or maybe it’s the same, and I’d just forgotten how it went back when he lived at home full-time.
And of course, no matter how frustrating it was, I love him and I miss him terribly already.
But I do wonder how he ever makes it out the door of his dorm room.