I Know He Needs to Break Away.
I am having trouble coming up with material for my blog.
This is not to say I’m not parenting, or learning new things every day. When I started this blog, I thought I would be having little revelations every day – and often, I do have little revelations.
But lately, they have been about the dog. He’s tough to train, and I never know if I’m doing anything right. Loki, in this way, is like Dylan.
But Dylan went to college, and he was a source of great learning for me. Watching the kids together, too, taught me a lot. But when Dylan left for college, Shane started hibernating – as teenagers often do – and I was left virtually alone.
We don’t eat dinner together anymore. I know it started when I stopped eating gluten, but it’s gotten worse. We don’t even eat dinner in the same room anymore. Everyone just grazes at random. On a good day, two of us will go out to eat together. Often, we will drive through somewhere and hand Shane the crappy food teenagers enjoy. Later I will have a bowl of spinach and green onions or something.
Truthfully, dinner and car rides is all we had left – and lately, we don’t even have dinner. I can’t help but think about that commercial that says families who eat dinner together are better off. And we ate dinners together for many, many years.
But that darned gluten is in everything, and making three separate meals just seems ridiculous.
We do occasionally watch TV together. Recently we watched Jeopardy’s “Teen Tournament” with Shane, and that was great fun. It was short-lived, but great fun. And we watched the entire season of The Masked Singer with him. Sometimes TV is the only way we can drag him back to us.
I know he needs to break away. I know he needs to be independent. And I know this is a natural phase of his life.
Shane is doing his own thing, his way. He’s quietly moving out of the childhood realm and into the adult world. I miss him, as he’s going, and it’s hard to know that he’ll be fully grown if I so-much-as blink.
And unlike Dylan, there are no fights, no disagreements, no debates over what should and shouldn’t be done. Shane is a completely different person, and he is growing in his own way – which is to say: a completely different way.
And that is fine. It just feels like Shane is growing up without me.
And with Dylan gone, it’s just so very, very quiet.
So while I will keep writing, please understand if it’s not as frequently, or if it revolves around parenting a dog. It’s just my life these days.