we have not invented the technology that would allow your thoughts to go directly to paper. if that were the case, i would have filled up a book in the last few weeks. instead, i have thought about it. the thoughts have been like lumber going down a stream, random and running fast and then jamming at some point and stopping. at points i have been on the banks of the stream looking at them, at other points i have been in the stream. there is always a flow of water, of life, going on and on. and i am stuck. i am always stuck in life it seems.
the daily OM today talks about your purpose in life, and i have thought that one of those reasons i have crashed down in this particular scenario has had something to do with austin. i think that is true, but now i have reached a place where it is time for me to reexamine what i am doing, and maybe to adjust to a new purpose. on many levels i have believed that i should be a teacher, and i have taken the most conventional form of that and made it my life's work. but maybe that isn't it. maybe i am supposed to do something else, influence or change in some other way. i just don't know. and i am back in the logjam, again.
so many changes with austin. all of a sudden, he was gone and he is grown. what started it all was the simple act of getting as driver's license. it let him free in the world to take him wherever he wanted, gave him options he didn't previously have easy access to. life got to be cici's pizza buffet, with lots of good things, and any time you have too much of a good thing, it can turn around and bite you in the ass.
he has switched girlfriends. in a lot of ways, amy was a blessing in that she was naive, shy and very sheltered. i saw some good things come out of that relationship, and one of those was austin's ability to protect and care. but he outgrew her, and i realized that i really didn't know my son, or what made him happy. i went along with what i saw, and believed he was secure and happy. in fact, he was bored and tired of her and needed to move on because, as he said, he wasn't himself with her.
enter lindsey into his world. a student of mine this past year, she is about everything amy isn't, but not necessarily in bad way. she is open, forthright, outspoken, not shy. she set her goal to get him, and she did. he was a bit naive about the pursuit, but not really. she seems to make him happier and more relaxed, and he has a life separate from her, which he really didn't have with amy. he says and does anything with her, which he didn't do with amy, and i guess that is a good thing. along with this, however, came sex. and he told me about it, somewhere in the winding hills of southern ohio on a two lane road to nowhere. in fact, the road was going somewhere, but not where i thought it would go.
how i have handled the sex thing has been interesting. i did cry. i didn't know why, but austin did. he said it was because he was not a little kid anymore with this step. he was exactly right. we talked a lot about it, and about the quickness of this choice. i knew it was coming, but i was shocked at how fast it happened.
this led me to asking a lot of frank questions to both austin and lindsey. how were they able to make this choice of giving up their virginity so quickly? what i found out was that it seems that kids do NOT place a lot of emotional value on this act. it is perceived as being an "animal instinct" according to kelley lowe. this point of view came in a conversation between kelley, her mother (MJ) and myself sitting at the table in my kitchen discussing viewpoints. curiously, it seems that kids today are more afraid of words and talking as intimacy then they are of baring their bodies and the awkwardness and exposure of sex.
this is an interesting concept, and i have adopted it. it is radically different from my age and time. all of my contemporaries were in their twenties before we had sex, and everyone, except me, had it only with the person they married. we were all scared i believe of exposing ourselves. this was like some sacred, holy act. but it has been shown increasingly over the past few decades that we are dinosaurs wandering around jurassic park and our children are frolicking merrily outside the walls. so this spring, and these weeks have been me slowly leaving the park.
lindsey and i sat on the bleachers in the sun last monday while dave hacker ran austin and andrew through a workout. the sun was blazing, we were sharing wawa tea and my hoagie, and i asked her a lot of questions, in particular why she made the choice she did. she didn't really know. i thought it was planned, but it was not really according to her. it just happened. so maybe that is it. maybe things just happen because it is a moment, and there really is no more significance to it than that. i am left to wonder what the moments are in the lives of our children that will be significant and life changing. i am thinking increasingly that they are somehow always going to be negative.
this is a generation of children who have conversations on cellphones about things, who text back and forth constantly, who twitter and facebook. but they don't talk to each other. they fear looking someone in the eyes and telling them how they feel. they will fight, they will joke, they will sext each other with pictures, but they can't be intimate with their feelings. even austin is this way, telling me as we are wandering the walmart this past monday that he does love lindsey, but he hasn't told her that because it is awkward and weird and uncomfortable for him. i am wondering what could be more awkward than being naked and having sex in various ways. yet for him, this is easy, feelings are hard.
i do understand this, but i question what kind of adults these kids will be. what will they pass on to THEIR kids? will they be able to engage them in teaching them how to hug, to look at people, to show emotion? or will there be another generation of kids who operate in a semi-shallow way? what will they teach them about their hearts?
i wonder what i have taught austin about being honest with his feelings. i thought i had done a good job. he does talk to me, and he does tell me how he feels. but have i failed him by not teaching him how to walk in the world outside of our house? where is the line, and how will he know who to trust? in many ways, i want to teach him to make the effort, and that is what i told him monday. take the risk. i didn't, and it has changed the path of my life. i suspect that had i been more open and fearless, i might have had a different path.
so it comes back to what is my purpose here, and what should i do? and the answer is...no answer.
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