Aidan and I are arguing on the back roads of Vermont.\u00a0 He is furious I am making him skip a day of our ski vacation to attend a class and tour of Bennington\u00a0 College. <\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cYou act like I am taking you to a gulag,\u201d I say sarcastically, squeezing the steering wheel until my fingers turn white.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry that I don\u2019t want to go to school<\/i> on my vacation!\u201d he says while texting his girlfriend at the same time.\u00a0 \u00a0 My thoughts are flying as fast as the white lines, trying to find words that will wake him from the hormonal coma he seems to have fallen into making him completely apathetic to his future, his life and seemingly everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019m not doing this for me. I\u2019m doing this for YOU!\u201d\u00a0 I hiss wondering\u00a0why everything I say lately sounds like a clich\u00e9\u2019, a 50\u2019s sitcom, akin to there are people starving in Ethiopia.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Recently I was out to dinner with friends in Brooklyn.\u00a0 They were excited that their kids had gotten into their first choice colleges. One was going to Brown, the other to Wesleyan, the third was already at Middlebury and while I was happy for all of them, I squirmed in my seat and ordered another wine recognizing the feeling I often have when it comes to these things: slightly outside normal.<\/p>\n
School has never been easy for Aidan.\u00a0 He never drew in the lines or even on the line, he read in between them. By second grade, Aidan was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) a learning difference <\/i>that has been met with impatience, confusion and a lot of eye rolling, even from me. Medication and a few compassionate teachers along the way have helped, but overall, school was never a place where Aidan felt good about himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like doing taxes, but I have to,\u201d I say when Aidan complains about homework or tests.\u00a0 I have become a stereotype: a sighing, frustrated, annoyed parent who picks up wet towels, replaces empty rolls of toilet paper and turns out lights reciting facts about carbon footprints, global warming and waste.\u00a0 I can feel Aidan tuning me out. To him, I have become the Charlie Brown teacher; a hollow, meaningless voice.\u00a0 I recently discovered he has me in his phone under \u201cEvil Warlord\u201d. He was looking for his phone and used mine to call. It was on my bed when I heard the theme music for Darth Vader. \u00a0Nice.<\/p>\n
I speed into the Visitors parking lot. where there is already a tour starting. Aidan sighs when I turn off the engine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis sucks.\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell if they have a PhD program for being obnoxious, you should do well\u201d I say \u00a0slamming the door so hard the group turns toward us.<\/p>\n
The perky female tour guide walks backwards past pastoral barns, quaint dorms and sunny classrooms listing the seemingly endless amount of groups and activities she is involved in.\u00a0 Aidan hangs toward the back of the group texting his girlfriend, refusing to ask questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cOooh, Nice theater\u201d I say as the perky student shows us the pristine theater where two teenagers with nose rings and tattoos are painting a set. Perhaps it is my age and my memory that makes me feel nostalgic for my college years where I acted in plays, questioned my existence in philosophy class and chain smoked with my friends in the library.<\/p>\n
Why doesn\u2019t Aidan want this?<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know how lucky you are?\u201d\u00a0 I ask sliding into my seat when the tour is over. \u201cDo you even care at ALL? \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cYes! These tours are just boring, that\u2019s all,\u201c he mumbles staring out the window, the endless texts beeping in.\u00a0 I imagine snatching his phone and throwing it out the window.\u00a0 Instead, I look in the rear view mirror at the empty back seat.\u00a0 I can see Aidan strapped into his car seat at five years old, smiling, singing at the top of his lungs a song about planets he learned on a television show.<\/p>\n
I drive the twisting back roads behind Bennington, lost in the memories of how close Aidan and I once were, bonded more tightly than ever by the mutual loss of his father. \u00a0 I sigh, knowing Aidan,by being obnoxious is simply doing his job so it will be easier to let him go..<\/p>\n
\u201cRace and Place in Urban America<\/em> sounds like a good class\u201d Aidan says . He is actually looking through the thick catalogue of courses. I nod and smile slightly. \u00a0 He will be seventeen next week and he has thinned out, growing tall and handsome, a mop of curls forming around his face .<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. Sounds very cool.\u201d\u00a0 I say, pretending not to care.<\/p>\n I want to tell him about a sit-in at Sarah Lawrence when I was there , how the\u00a0 students shut the school down for ten days demanding more black teachers and students. Instead, I drive in silence, noticing the patches of brown where the snow has melted,\u00a0 spring hiding patiently below the surface.<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aidan and I are arguing on the back roads of Vermont.\u00a0 He is furious I am making him skip a day of our ski vacation to attend a class and tour of Bennington\u00a0 College. \u201cYou act like I am taking you to a gulag,\u201d I say sarcastically, squeezing the steering wheel until my fingers turn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n