Surviving the teenage years

I’m beginning to understand why my mother worried about me so much. Actually, she still worries, and I’ll be 57 next month.

Moms and dads worry because the world is dangerous and unpredictable and uncontrollable, and so are teenagers.

I know this now because I have two of them. My 18-year-old, Casey, just graduated from Roosevelt High School in Seattle (happy dance). In days, he’ll leave for Alaska to work on our friend, Steve Lindbeck’s Congressional campaign.

For five weeks, he’ll be his own pilot, even though he’ll be living with older adults, including the candidate and his wife. Steve has made it very clear that they will not have the time or energy to host or take care of Casey. Our son will have to feed himself, wash his own clothes, find his way to and from work, and remember to apply mosquito repellent daily.

This will be a test, a test of his maturity response system.

Casey’s held jobs (umpiring baseball), but he’s never been on his own, much less in another state. At home, he will cook for himself (quite ably, I might add), but he’d rather we cook for him AND keep the car filled with gas AND launder and fold his clothes AND get the groceries AND make arrangements for Alaska and college. (He’s going to Western Washington University in the fall if he survives Alaska.)

AND no he can’t go the store to get milk (even though he drinks most of it) right now because a) He’s too tired or b) He’s in the middle of a game of League of Legends.

AND, yes, I do imagine him telling an employer those things. I hope he’s prepared to work hard in Alaska. If there’s one thing I know about political campaigns, it’s that every staff person pulls his or her weight and then some.

Okay, I’m probably worrying too much. Kids have a way of being their best selves when they’re around other adults. It’s the parents who get dumped on. We’re their safe haven, but we also enable their dependence, their sense of entitlement. We will do/buy/provide for them when they should be doing/buying/providing for themselves because, well, we just don’t want another fight or debate over semantics. (Casey’s so adept at the latter, he should consider a career in law.)

A lot of parenting ideals go out the window when you actually become one. Before I became the mother of two adopted Korean boys, I told myself that my children would learn to keep house.

Ha! My boys’ rooms might just qualify as hazmat sites. Charlie, who is 16, has yet to clean up a large bowl of stale popcorn, half-full bags of Cheetos, potato chips and Goldfish, popsicle and candy wrappers, gel ice packs, an uncapped stick deodorant and about four large loads worth of dirty clothes.

Casey’s no better about his clothes. I can let the laundry slide, but I really should do something about the large box of “Crimson Rage” fireworks in his closet, the one with the warning, “Shoots flaming balls.”

It could be worse. My kids could be like me. Now, I remember my coming-of-age differently than my mother does. I remember the almost straight-A student who never got into trouble with teachers, who did what was expected, who graduated from high school and went on to college and then a career and a stable marriage.

My mother remembers the girl who rode her bicycle (without a helmet) down a busy arterial to Seattle’s Green Lake and didn’t come home until dusk (there were no cell phones then). She remembers the late-night parties I walked home from, and that ill-advised trip with a boyfriend down the Stillaguamish River in a Kmart rubber raft (we flipped and almost had to be rescued).

She also remembers when I drove that same boyfriend’s jacked-up Mustang with the bald rear tires into the side of a mountain, totaling the car and giving myself a fairly serious concussion.

And here I am worrying about Charlie playing high school football under the watchful eyes of coaches and a Children’s Hospital trainer.

Speaking of Charlie, he will be crossing his own maturity milestone this summer. My tough (thanks to Casey) speed-demon of a younger son will be learning how to drive.

Heaven help us.