Down to the Two of Us

Dearest Rachel –

As weird as it sometimes is to have Daniel’s friend Logan rooming with us, there are times when he’s almost indispensable. While he hasn’t been the influence toward improving Daniel’s work ethic (but what’s he going to be able to do that will earn him more than his portfolio already does?), he’s at least forced (if that’s not too strong of a word for it) him to learn to temper his topics of discussion when it comes to politics and the like. The two of them share enough in the way of entertainment choices that I don’t have to be around to keep Daniel amused all the time, either.

In fact, I’m a little concerned about that latter situation, since I’m growing out of practice as to what to do when it’s down to the two of us in the house these days.

This weekend, it would seem that Logan’s parents are off on a mini-vacation, and he has been tasked with getting them to the airport (at four in the morning, poor guy!) and keeping an eye on the house he grew up in. A more than reasonable request from one’s parents, to be sure. However, this obviously means that he’s not around here during the weekend. Granted, it could be worse, as I’m not on booth duty this week – after two weekends in a row, it’s high time I had one off where I was neither traveling nor on assignment – so I can hang out with him and keep the both of us occupied. However, the fact of the matter is that he and I don’t connect the way he and Logan do. That may seem like I’m stating the obvious, but what I mean by that is that I don’t even really know how to keep him occupied and entertained the way the two of them manage to do so.

I’m not sure if I sound jealous about that – I shouldn’t be; a young man should be on a similar wavelength with his peers that he isn’t with his parents – nor if I should feel it’s my responsibility to keep him thus occupied – he’s my kid, after all, but he’s also supposedly a grown man, who ought to be able to fend for himself. Not to be ‘that guy,’ but when I was his age (and go ahead and imagine that line being said in a creaky-old-man voice), you and I had been together for seven years, and he was already six. He ought to have been on his own for all that time, by now.

But of course, the circumstances are different with him than with either of us. He never found, as the old song goes, that “gal just like the gal that married dear old Dad,” and after watching me search for someone to take your place, sees no value in the attempt. That “right female to help bear the burden” isn’t on his radar, and while it’s not entirely from a lack of trying – you remember the girlfriends he’d occasionally have during his college career – he seems to have given up on any such search at this point. He’s not about to set out on his own.

The thing is, I’m not pushing him in that direction, myself. At some point, I’ll be the one leaving this place – one way or another – and he will take possession of his childhood home himself. Now, he may not explicitly acknowledge that he’s aware of this, but I’m sure that he is. So why should he push himself to go anywhere and make something of himself, when I’m not insisting that he do so?

And I’m pretty sure this is a mistake on my part, too. True, he has certain… disadvantages… when it comes to dealing with people, meaning that so many professions and relationships would be difficult for him to get into and maintain, but by not insisting that he get out and at least try, I’m letting him letting what little he has learned about social interactions atrophy.

At the same time, if I had pushed for him to get out and make his own way in the world – like Logan’s parents have (which leaves me wondering if I’m inadvertently countering whatever they intended by doing so by being so lax in terms of my landlording duties) – I’d be at that much more of a loss in your absence. The house is empty enough as it is; how much more so would it be if he was on his own somewhere else?

It’s not even easy for the two of us to function as a two-person household. With Logan gone, we were at liberty to do something that he would have otherwise had no part of (he may not eat strictly kosher, but he has a, let’s just say, limited palate). But that meant coming up with something, a feat that was difficult even for the three of us back in the day

Eventually, we decided to visit a strip mall that’s barely a couple miles from home, and trying out a ‘lab’ (whatever that means; maybe they’re something of a ‘test kitchen’?) outlet of a ramen shop we’d been to out by church (and I don’t know if it existed before you had to leave), but which we’d never been to specifically, despite it being so close by. Go figure. We thought about eating there, but given that there were only a handful of tables there – and Daniel preferred to return home and watch YouTube – we decided to take everything to go instead (which turned out to be better for me, as I couldn’t finish my order; this way, I at least had a container to save the remainder in).

The irony is that, once we got everything out of their containers and ourselves settled in for dinner and entertainment, we kept taking turns falling asleep in our respective chairs while we watched videos ‘together.’ One would watch while the other slept, and vice versa. It was supposed to be a case of sharing the moment together, but it ended up just being the two of us napping while watching what the other wasn’t awake to.

I’m sure that, if you were watching us, you might have found it amusing; you used to tease me for falling asleep in the family room during just that (and I would give as good as I got, since you would fall asleep as well, despite insisting that you weren’t tired, like a recalcitrant child up past her bedtime), so this might have elicited a chuckle of “just like old times” from you. Still, it’s not the sort of father-son bonding I’d been hoping for, but it’s what I’ve got at the present. I don’t know how to change, or even if I can.

In either case, I’ll continue to ask for your eye to be upon us, and that you wish us luck. We’re going to need it.