Hey, I recognize you: You’re my family
We recently had a rare late-Winter occurrence in the Breen
household; and, no, it wasn’t an early appearance of my legs in
shorts.
Last week, all four Breens were in the house at the same time,
before bedtime, before dinner, on a weeknight. A strange confluence
of events created this perfect storm: no eighth-grade basketball
games or Babe Ruth practices for my younger son. High school
baseball practice was done for the older one and Mom and Dad were
done with work.
Hey, I recognize you: You’re my family
We recently had a rare late-Winter occurrence in the Breen household; and, no, it wasn’t an early appearance of my legs in shorts.
Last week, all four Breens were in the house at the same time, before bedtime, before dinner, on a weeknight. A strange confluence of events created this perfect storm: no eighth-grade basketball games or Babe Ruth practices for my younger son. High school baseball practice was done for the older one and Mom and Dad were done with work.
We almost didn’t know what to do without the pressure to get a late meal ready for one of us. Bedtime was still three or four hours away and all homework was completed. The weeknight free time threw us for a loop.
This is the season where schedules are crazy, because school basketball is ending while baseball season is beginning. Practices overlap, for the boys and for me as a coach. Our color-coded refrigerator calendar shows a rainbow of activity that explains the rarity of our recent free evening.
No one quite said “Who are you and what are you doing here?” during our special evening, though we did marvel aloud at the rarity.
With high school basketball season over, our oldest son no longer shows up all sweaty and sore well past the traditional dinner time. Now, he shows up dirty and hungry from an after-school baseball practice, ready to eat, finish his homework and leave a trail of clothes and books and shoes from the living room through the family room and kitchen and all the way to his room.
It’s been a long time since I was a 15-year-old high-schooler who had much better things to do than make sure my grass-stained baseball pants made it to the laundry room.
If my son ever doesn’t respond to me calling him from the kitchen, for example, it is not hard to find him based on the unmistakable teen trail that he leaves. The school books on the kitchen counter and the back pack on the floor tell me he is somewhere nearby.
Leaving the kitchen, I pick up his trail in the living room, where he has left his belt on the chair and baseball bag on the carpet. But he is not there.
I head east, toward the family room. He has been here; that much is clear. There is an empty glass that recently contained milk and a plate that held either a mini, microwavable pizza or leftover spaghetti.
I head back to the hallway and peer into the bathroom, where there is a toothbrush on the counter – it’s been there since morning – and a towel on the floor. Using the towel rack would be way too easy.
So now I figure I’ve got him cornered. He’s got to be in one of two rooms: his brother’s, which I know isn’t the case because I don’t hear them arguing about who is cheating in some NBA or NFL video game; or his own.
Finally, I reach his room, the secret lair at the end of the hall, where parents only visit to nudge the kid awake if he oversleeps or get all up in his business about leaving a mix of clean and dirty clothes on the floor when he has drawers and a hamper and a closet and various other organizational tools.
My one-man search party has found its target. I tell the teen to pick up his washable belongings, bring them to the laundry room (“You know, that room you pass through on the way to the garage. What? Yes, we do have a laundry room.”)
Having erased his trail of personal belongings, I point out that our entire family is here and we get to spend quality time with one another. Surprisingly, he realizes the rarity and understands.
The four of us have a nice, home-cooked dinner, share stories about our day and have some laughs, then retreat to the family room where we watch TV together, a relaxing capper to our rare but wonderful evening.
Want more Breen Damage? Check out the blog at http://thebreenblog.blogspot.com . Adam teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance.
