C-Minus

I’m looking for the joys of parenthood in all the usual places but would settle for far less, an IOU of gratitude from my teenage son or one day without a screaming meltdown from my daughter. I would settle for an hour without bickering. I might do a back flip if my kids’ soiled laundry was placed in the hamper rather than back in the dresser to mingle with the clean clothes, dirty socks jive talking with clean boxer shorts.

I’m not their butler. I’m not their valet. I’m not their maid. If I repeat this mantra one hundred times a day it might manifest in the real world.

My son earned a C- in Geometry. Not the end of the world, of course, though I’m bothered (actually kind of pissed off) because the C- is due to laziness not lack of ability. In his other classes the kid is earning A’s and B’s. I don’t like math my son says, as if this explains everything and ends the discussion. OK, fine, the mysterious world of mathematic concepts doesn’t put flame to your wick, but with a little more effort on your part – and effort is all this comes down to – you could earn a B. There are all kinds of tutoring opportunities…

That’s as far as I get before I see him slip behind his impenetrable wall of teenage arrogance and angst. The drawbridge goes up and slams shut. He dares me to talk until my face turns blue-green. I don’t understand. High school is different now. This isn’t 1955. He turns his back on me, slips headphones on, cranks up Florence and the Machine and disappears into his interior world. I imagine ripping the headphones off his head, spinning him around in his chair and going Tony Soprano on his scrawny teenage butt. My superior adult knowledge can be forced into his brain, right?

The C- rankles me. Why this acceptance of mediocrity when a fraction more effort would have earned him a B? A couple of sessions with a peer tutor and he could have cruised to a decent mark. It makes perfect sense to me; none to him, and this is, I think, the essence of being a parent. I can’t live my son’s life for him, make decisions for him, do the right thing for him; he is destined to be the proud owner of his own mistakes and more times than not all I will be able to do is stand by and watch him stumble over his ego, his temper, his arrogance, and his fears.

Perhaps it’s not as bleak as all that. Perhaps as Bruce Springsteen wrote many years ago, one day we will look back on this and it will all seem funny.