I Love My Boy

Thing Two had an hour and a half of soccer practice, two hours of Confirmation class, and an hour of goalie training consecutively today.  Allowing for the necessary drive time in between those scattered map points, he and I left the house at 12:40 and will probably get home about 8:45 tonight.

I hate this crazy freaking schedule, I really do. And I’m just the driver; I can’t even imagine how he feels about it, although I have to say that he has been a real trouper today.  Luckily (for a variety of reasons) the Confirmation class is only one Sunday a month, not every Sunday like the soccer.

I spend a lot of time in the car in general with day-to-day stuff, but since family logistics dictate that I’m usually the parent who does the road trips with Thing One, he and I have also covered a lot of ground together.  I can think of at least seven multi-hundred mile soccer trips with him in the past couple of years.  I wouldn’t trade those for gold, believe it or not. The best conversations I have with him take place while we are sitting side-by-side in the car.  Thing Two not being quite as verbal or expressive as his brother, we tend to bond over music in the car rather than talking.  I was thinking about that on the way to goalie training, and reflecting that I’ll still take the one on one time with either of my sons whenever and however I can get it, whether or not it involves deep conversations.

And then a song came on the radio, and he commented that the singer used to be in the band Linkin Park.  Immediately followed by asking me why the former lead singer of that band would’ve committed suicide.  Screech, halt, back up the bus. What was I saying about not having deep conversations with him in the car???  Scratch that.

Oh, and speaking of him not being my talker, the woman running the CCD program asked him to read the closing prayer tonight, one he’d never seen before, from the microphone in front of a room full of people.   He read it so beautifully I almost cried.  Although he’s only 13, he has a deep voice already, and had to bend down a little bit from his 5’11” height to reach the microphone.  He has new glasses, ones that look better on his face, and he’s grown out his crew cut enough so that now you can see the dark curls against his pale skin. I know I’m prejudiced, but he is a handsome child, and he’s growing up so fast I almost can’t stand it.