He Closed His Bedroom Door.
When Dylan turned 14, he was quite sick. He used a humidifier in his room, to help relieve some of the congestion. And to keep the humidified air inside, he did something he’d never done before.
He closed his bedroom door.
I haven’t seen Dylan a lot since then. He sleeps with his door shut, still. He does have a lingering cough, so perhaps the humidifier is helping. But it is also helping him to sleep well past 9:00, which is when the rest of the world is awake. Originally, I would leave him notes as I left the house – until I realized that I was spending a lot of time writing and exchanging notes that Dylan never even saw. He’d sleep till noon and I wouldn’t even know if he was awake in there.
“Can you leave your door open?” I asked the other day, in the middle of the day, when no one was around to disturb him on either floor of our house.
“I like the privacy,” he said, “but whatever. I guess I can leave it open.”
So sometimes he comes out during the day. Then he goes back into his room at night and closes his door, even before he takes a shower.
Besides his brand new music studio – a birthday gift for creating electronic music – Dylan has two iPads and a cell phone in there with him. All electronics are required to leave the premises (and alight outside the door) at 10:00 p.m. I’d hoped this would allow him some extra, earlier sleep. But last night, he was trouncing around at 11:30.
Why I was up at 11:30 to see him trouncing is beyond me.
Anyway, I think this is the beginning of the end. I think turning 14 set him tumbling right off the precipice from “tween” to full-blown “teen.” Now that the door is closed, we never see Dylan anymore. He is a teenager.
And if I’m not mistaken, when Dylan fully emerges, he will only do so to go to college.