Twice this week, Joey has taken out the garbage without being asked.  I realize this has happened a few times before this week.  Like, I mean, maybe two or three times over the past six years or so.  But in the past, it’s always been a strategic move for him.  A poorly veiled attempt to prove that he’s responsible enough to have sex with his girlfriend or buy a gun.  (God, how I wish I was kidding.)  This week it appeared that he may have taken out the garbage because he noticed it was full.  He didn’t put in a new bag or anything, but still.

Before I go any further, I must say that if you’re one of those people who post on Facebook pictures of you with your teenagers laughing together while you clean the garage as a family, or if your teenager doesn’t mind being seen with you in public, you will not understand what I’m writing.  In fact, I don’t even want you to continue reading.  Really.  Click on something else or go sing Kumbaya with your neighbors or something.  You sicken me. 

But for you Real People out there, I think you will agree that this may be some kind of beginning of a Turning Point.  I’ve seen it before with my older son.  It was different with Michael, but then again my two boys are completely different people with little in common.

Further evidence of this Turning Point is that Joey’s room is no longer as gross as it once was.  OK.  I admit that I think sometimes his girlfriend cleans it.  And I also admit I removed a glass from his room earlier today that did contain about an inch of solid mass that was once milk.  And the sheets on the bed have not been changed since that last time I changed them myself (despite his protest), which was at least two months ago.  However, I have noticed that clean clothes and dirty clothes are now kept in separate piles and there are several areas on the floor where the carpet has been visible for well over a week.

I realize that Joey and I are in some sort of dysfunctional vortex of ambiguity with respect to the quest toward his maturity.  I desperately want Joey to begin taking responsibility for himself.  Get and keep a job.  Manage his money.  Quit asking ME for money.  Read a book, for God’s sake.  But, despite my constant requests that he take responsibility for himself, I realize that there is a big part of me that wants him to stay right where he is.  When he did have a job (for six days about six weeks ago), I missed him terribly.  I made sure I was home during that 15 minute period between school and work so I could make him a sandwich and hand him his freshly laundered uniform I’d made sure to retrieve from his bedroom floor at 4:00 a.m. before I went to work.

I KNOW!  I know my job is to get him to a point where he no longer needs me.  I know that my taking responsibility for washing his uniform is ultimately not in his best interest.  I know.  I know.  I KNOW!  But I keep remembering when he was little and I rocked him for hours singing song after song after song because I never did get tired of feeling his little body pressed up to mine so close that I could feel each breath.  And he never tired of me singing to him.  Or when he was two and we were camping and he used to sit up in his bunk and look at me from across the camper as I lay in my bunk.  And when I smiled at him he would wave to me.  And I would wave back.  And we would both smile at each other before we went to sleep. 

And poor Joey!  It’s hard to imagine what he’s going through right now.  His desire to be seen as an adult is obvious.  He goes to doctor’s appointments without me.  When I called our family doctor to consult about a prescription after Joey had seen him for bronchitis, Joey was furious that our doctor had discussed this with me.  Joey will drive anywhere in the city and will manage just about any business without asking his ‘mommy’ to speak for him.

But something in him is fighting this whole move toward adulthood.  When I catch him in one of his rare vulnerable moments, he’ll admit that he doesn’t want to grow up.  “I want to live with you ‘till I’m 30,” he’ll admit.  He procrastinates on any task that will set him on the road to adulthood.  He’s one of the smartest people I know but he’s failed three classes in his two years of high school.  He continually gives me barely feasible reasons not to apply for jobs.

Sometimes I wonder if he worries about leaving me, as I seem to be perpetually single.  Last night I asked him if he was going to be home for dinner.  “No.  I’m sorry,” he said.   Joey doesn’t like to be alone and doesn’t really understand that I actually love being alone.  Although I’ve told him a gazillion times that I’m responsible for my happiness and he’s responsible for his, he still somehow slipped that ‘I’m sorry,’ in there.  Why would he be sorry?  Another little chunk of data in the cog that is Joey’s growing up.

As for me.  I’ll keep doing my best at doing my job.  I’ll push him out of the nest.  I won’t keep him from taking responsibility for his actions, though it will forever and always be the most difficult aspect of my life.  I will fight against my own selfish desires and I will somehow find the strength to make his supply of money so scarce that it will drive him to employment, even though a big part of me would like to continue to slip him twenty dollar bills and Chili’s gift cards.  And in a few years, regardless of his level of readiness, I will push him out of this nest that is our home.

And he will fly.