Yes, his hair has gotten too long with the barbers closed so he suddenly looks like a broody teenager but with the all the news and his adult questions about COVID and after a few months stuck in the house together, he’s found independence and an increasing need to “go to my room and have some quiet chill time.” (Read: I no longer want to be near you guys… You two sicken me.)
He watches the Evening News with Uncle Lester Holt with us and has seen the stories of the sick and the dying. He has asked relevant questions about our older family members and our friends who are more vulnerable. When I came down with a stomach bug he followed me around the house listening to me moan and was surely thinking about life without me. Or maybe he was just thinking about life. Or hopefully, he was thinking about when I would get better so we could play Fortnight again?
And yes, Spring 2020 is the year I let him play a “gun game”. I justified it because it was something we could do together that was a nice bond after yelling at each other all morning about how best to multiply. (His way or I guess The Way, is very frustrating). I held off on the gun game as long as I could but it has been an exceptionally fun game for us to play together. On teams of two and with our animated characters, the playing field is level. He is older and I am younger. There is no age difference. If I fall on the digital battlefield it is my son who comes and picks me up to carry me to safety. It’s also my son, my little boy, who talks smack at me when I don’t carry him to safety fast enough or build some stupid structure to protect us that lets the enemy know EXACTLY WHERE WE ARE and we both lose the round. I’ve been playing games longer than you and your way of doing math sucks! I don’t say that. I let him be the grown-up.
When watching the news about the financial ruin of so many across the globe he has asked intelligent questions about our finances and our “plan”. “Are you properly diversified, Dad? Do we have cash on hand? Do we have enough Gold? We are the guns?” Granted, that hasn’t changed his willingness to negotiate a better deal for doing chores but at least he has been thinking about money not being infinite like maybe he did a few months ago. When he still a child. I think he was six before COVID came around. Also, no guns.
During the middle of lockdown when he began missing his classmates he learned how to do Zoom calls with them. I figured it would be years before he would be sending emojis and group laughing over memes. They were all innocent chats on the couch about lizards and cats but soon the calls started happening in his bedroom. I made sure he kept his door cracked when he “had friends over.”
Since screen time has skyrocketed during lockdown I set up an app to limit that time and give me the ability to ensure the devices are locked down in the evening. Though I don’t want to (or need to yet) the app has the option to monitor search queries and chat logs. Taking a quick peek when learning how to use the service I did notice his search history. It was still charmingly innocent with some charming misspellings about how to make the perfect slime.
Still our boy.
Let’s not have another pandemic.