Failing the Parent Test. And the Girlfriend Test! But Not the Tutor Test.

One of the very oddest parts of this Getting Old Thang is that human beings I remember as small children suddenly, inexplicably metamorphose into autonomous adults.

You don’t notice it so much with your own children because the change is a gradual one that takes place along a continuum.

But with other people’s kids, the effect can be jarring.

Thus Nathan – who will forever be entombed within my mind as a bright, earnest 12-year-old who despite his efforts never quite fit in with the All Saints KoolKidZ gang – has metamorphosed into the smartest, most congenial 30-year-old imaginable with a brilliant and beautiful fiancée, a delightfully decorated house, an adorable Golden Lab, a rewarding and remunerative occupation, and a bottomless store of bonhomie.

I got along much better with Nathan than I did with Max who seemed bound and determined to find malevolent subtexts to every one of my feeble jokes to the point that I finally had to sit him down and talk to him about his attitude.

###

“I have a friend who lives in a cabin in Aptos,” I said to Max. “And this friend has always referred to his cabin as his ‘Kaczynski Cabin.’ It kinda stuck in my mind, you know. It’s alliterative. So, last night, when I said that Nathan and Krysten could build you a little Kaczynski Cabin on top of their hill, that’s what I was thinking of.

“I did not mean to imply that I think you’re unpleasant or antisocial or that you have latent serial killer tendencies. Yes, it would probably be better if my immediate association with isolated cabins was Thoreau and Walden Pond rather than the Unabomber, but alas! It’s not. And you really hurt my feelings by jumping on me to criticize me about this in front of other people. All I could think was, I must really embarrass him. I was half-inclined to pack up my bags and just leave without saying goodbye. But I decided to talk to you instead!”

“And I’m glad you did, Mom!” Max said. “Isn’t it normal for kids to feel embarrassed by their parents?”

“Is it? I know I found my own mother hideously embarrassing.”

“I think we have a much better relationship than you had with your mother,” Max said.

“I’d like to think so,” I said.

“Well. Even the fact that you didn’t pull some dramatic stunt but initiated a conversation with me –“

This level of condescension, of course, made me wish I had stormed off.

But I’m committed to behaving maturely with my offspring. No sense in making even more work for therapists!

So, we talked it through.

I don’t know if I felt better after we talked or not.

I suspect the only thing that would make me feel better would be if Max cut me the same kind of slack he seems to cut every other human being on the planet.

Celeste, Nathan’s mother, for example, is always making these incredibly stupid, demonstrably untrue utterances wrapped up as hipster wisdom. Max seems to have no problem at all with that.

###

Part of it may have been that Max was obviously exhausted and had brought a shitload of schoolwork with him. He hung out with the party crew – Nathan had imported him to the party at some expense - he played a lot of music. And he wrote briefs and assignments, pouring over his computer.

I’d told him in advance that I knew there wouldn’t be opportunities for intensive one-on-one mother/son togetherness time, and I wasn't going to personalize that. So, I don't think that was the issue.

No, the issue was a basic disconnect. We just didn’t seem to be communicating very well.

Maybe we’ve never communicated very well.

Maybe I don’t communicate very well with anyone.

Although, like I say, I had several long, pleasant conversations with Nathan and many shorter, more superficial but perfectly pleasant conversations with the other party guests.

So, who knows?

Not me!

I did have fun. It’s always a blast hanging out with people who are that much younger than I am and observing the way they interact. A Boomer spy in the House of Millennials! Plus I finished reading Bring Up the Bodies, and I explored the strange little town of Seymour, Connecticut – bisected and destroyed by the big, ugly, walled state route highway they built through it. Took many artsy photographs (see above.)



And yesterday, I ferried Samir up to Troy so he could tour the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It’s a pretty impressive campus, ranked 39th in the nation in engineering and engineering subspecialties.

“Oh, we give all our PhD students 100% support plus a modest living stipend,” the graduate admissions councilor told us.

So that, at least, solves one of Samir’s problems: How can I afford to go there?

Samir and I had no communication problems whatsoever despite the fact that English is his fourth language and Amazigh his first. We prattled merrily the whole drive up and the whole drive back about the apricot crop in Algeria, about the crazy drivers in Algiers, about the lost city of Timgad with its incredibly well preserved theaters and arches and Capitoline temples.

So maybe the deal is that I should just stop trying to communicate with native English speakers?

###

The deal is that I should definitely stop dating. Prospective Squeeze has not called or texted; moreover, he has ignored my (one) text and my (one) call.

I have no idea why. I suppose something about me at our last dinner was a turn-off. Was it my breath? My body odor? That horrible slackening around my jaw? The fact that the nail polish on my right ring finger is smudged? My chatter?

I personally wondered whether I had failed some test.

I dated a guy once who told me – after he had opened his passenger car door for me, and I had reached over to unlatch the driver’s side door for him – that he never asked a woman out twice if she failed to unlatch the driver’s side door for him. It was a test, you see.

Prospective Squeeze walked me to my car in light rain, but I did not volunteer to drive him back to his car in light rain. I was nervous, you see. The courtesy escaped my mind.

So possibly I failed that test.

Or possibly I’m just not very attractive or alluring.

I wasn’t particularly emotionally involved, and we hadn’t had sex. So, it’s not a really big deal. Just a puzzlement.

But a puzzlement which I’m spending waaaaay too much time trying to puzzle. That's the nature of this particular beast, right?

Best just to resolve not to put myself in this situation again.