What Are You Doing?

What are you doing? she asked me, holding her hand over her eyes.

I looked over at her and said I couldn't sleep. She turned and went back to the bedroom.

I too was sleeping soundly, but all of the sudden, BOING, eyes wide open, mind racing thru all the things he has to do in the coming days, weeks and months — all the things he hasn't even started to think about much less do.

He leaves for Michoacan in less than two weeks, but he hasn't finished the training materials, he hasn't even talked about packing, and he hasn't even bothered to open the light-weight travel cot we got him that sits in the shipping box on the floor of his room.

He leaves for college in about a year, but he hasn't started putting any real thought into where or why or how. We've talked about it with him. We've gone to presentations with him. We've tried to get him to start thinking about narrowing down the list that he hasn't bothered to begin writing. The college books from the library sit unopened on the living room floor while the stack of fun books he's been reading grows ever higher.

And he leaves for good in just a few years, yet there's no indication that he's given any thought to what he'd like to do. That in itself would not be so bad if he had a general vector on his target. At least then, he could think about how to make little things happen that push him in the right direction. But no — there's no direction. It's like pushing on a rope.

Ok, ok. All this is more about me than about him, you say? Sit down and relax, dad. Don't push. Let him live his life.

Ok fair enough. Then what happens when he shows up to leave for Mexico and he's never finished the training materials? Or what happens when he finally realizes too late that he needed to put some thought into this college thing before fall was upon him? And what happens when he graduates from college with good grades even and a nourishing liberal arts degree but with no plan for what comes next? All I know is that the plan can't include coming back here.

THAT is what's keeping me awake. ... Oh look, the birds are beginning to sing.

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