We will not be together like this, ever again

Being stuck in lockdown with a bored and restless teenager may sound like a parenting nightmare, but it can also be a vital and rare opportunity to build new bridges of understanding between the generations

Teenage 1’s prayers for schools to close, which he has been uttering for many years now, have come true at last. My son has always maintained that he can learn more from YouTube in half an hour than at school for a day.

Several days before the schools shut, I was in a state of confused apprehension about whether he should attend, taking cover behind the absence of a directive from the headmaster about Covid-19.

I didn’t want my son to miss out and hole up in his room all day. He’s in Grade 11, and much hangs in the balance right now. He then unlocked, with typical insight, the reason why he would be staying at home.

“Dad,” he said, looming over me and deploying his new broken-in voice to full effect. “Dad… you’re old.” (This is relative, by the way.) “If I get this virus I’ll be fine. But I love you and don’t want you to get it. You’re high-risk. So – I won’t be going to school tomorrow.”  

I have shared this trick with him, to tell, rather than to ask, and was impressed with this peerless demonstration. I had to applaud his faultless logic too, even if we both knew he only had his eye on staying up late and ratcheting up his status on League of Legends,  then sleeping well past noon and emerging for some chocolate cereal, perhaps laced with a litre of milk and half a kg of sugar.

Perhaps you can understand that with a school holiday already looming, my mental preparation and meagre budgetary allocation were now looking inadequate. Despite a rich social life, Teenage 1 has become accustomed to creating and sustaining rich online relationships. Self-isolation will suit him fine. It’s what he does anyway. Well, most of the time. I can learn from him.

Whenever fellow parents bewail their children’s online gaming habits, I give my son’s example. He has made and sustained some excellent relationships online. These friendships have translated into ‘real’ physical friendships, as the fellows gather on a weekend, with their little man-bags filled with contraband, before heading off on skateboards for the mall.  

But now things are different. They cannot go to the mall. They cannot go ‘skating’, which is teenage shorthand for ‘smoke cigarettes.’ All he will have will be me, as we prepare for some sustained self-isolation. And I’m old, apparently. But he has what he needs. And I have him, all to myself. Which makes me happy. 

In my very differently constellated family, flung far and wide now, hundreds of kilometres apart, each of my three children will be with one parent for the foreseeable future. My daughter will be staying with her mother, and my youngest will be with his mom.

Before the President announced the lockdown I suddenly found myself extremely anxious, wondering if I’d have enough time to go and fetch him from the Cape south coast, where he is with my daughter for a family funeral.

His grandmother died last week, a good death, as deaths go, surrounded by her children, at home in her bed. Everyone had prepared as well as possible. Perhaps her passing is a part of the celebration of a special life our family needs right now, before we separate for a while.

I will be rescuing Teenage 1 from this vortex of small irritating cousins and restoring him to his own domain. All he wants to know is if I’ve paid the Wi-Fi and if we have enough chocolate cereal. He says that milk doesn’t matter, that he can eat it dry if necessary. I’m grateful for this concession. 

I remind him that if we run out of anything, there will be nearby shops we can go to, a fact that has curiously managed to evade many of my fellow citizens.  

I anticipate that we will discuss how we will co-exist in harmony. Maybe we won’t even need to. There is nothing for me to impose, no rule or guideline. I know that when we get home, where already I’ve tidied his room and done all his laundry and paid for the Wi-Fi, he’ll both hunker down and be happy. I will miss other human contact, miss my other children. But just knowing that I have people to miss is special.

I have learnt from Teenage 1 that to be locked down with him is a privilege. He’s almost grown, and we will not be together like this ever again.