We’re a little over six months into the C19 world and The Fellas and I are still pretty locked down. We opted out of the return to in-person schooling. We haven’t hit any restaurants, we have stayed in a local water-park hotel, they don’t go to the grocery store with me and we’ve done one play date with another locked-down family. We are deep in C19-careful protocol.
I’ve loved the time with The Fellas and I think it’s going to go a long way in solidifying the right kind of long-term father/son and brother/brother relationships I aspire to. Being on top of each other leads to closeness or fratricide, and we ended up on the right side of those options. We’ve navigated some ups and downs in school, Ford has moved from “Daddy” to “Dad”, Hunter has started some ADHD meds testing to good early results (I have him take his “handsome pill” every morning), some stuff has dropped off and needs to get re-invigorated (Scouts, team sports, music lessons), teeth have been lost, guinea pigs joined the family, we’ve shared some great TV series (the Last Airbender stuff was strangely cross-generational), we’re watching football together, and there has been a lot of Fortnite…it’s been a messed-up year, but not a waste of one.
It’s great with The Fellas, but I think it also might have been great with a real adult lady. Few of my married friends have a lot of great words to say about spousal co-incarceration – most have the daily kid drama and remote work sucking up their mental bandwidth, and none of us had the self-awareness to say “this thing might last a year, how do we make the most of it?”. With the right partner, this block of close-proximity free time could be magnificent. My guess is that it is difficult to get to the full joy of adult relationships because the world is always beating inroads to your time together. I think it probably would have been wonderful in March to plan some kind of ‘closeness’ journey with a lady friend. Ugh, I look at that last sentence, and while I believe the sentiment is accurate, it reads like the worst kind of touchy-feely sentence that I would be put off to read. There’s no good reason for me to copyedit a sentence just for me, but if years from now I look back at it I need to leave myself the note that I should have written it in a less wussy-type way. And I digress. It would have been great to tap this unique moment in time to build a relationship for the next fifty years, but it didn’t happen.
The lady-friends I had in my orbit were awesome ladies, but weren’t the right candidates, and I think would not have survived the ordeal. My guess is that there would have been a lot of shared curiosities investigated. Real hopes and fears and joys and sadnesses shared. An authentic “what future do we want for ourselves” exploration. I’m glad I didn’t push any type of C19 relationship accelerant, because I wouldn’t have been ‘in it to win it’, I just would have been ‘in it to be occupied’ or ‘in it to hook up a lot because we’re always together and home a lot’. Acceptable short term modes, but not up to the character standards called for in a drive-for-relationship.
There’s a pretty great lady knocking on the door to see if I’m home, and can come out to play. She’s pretty awesome, and interesting, and hot, and fun…and interested. I’m bored. I’m sporadically lonely. I’m overdue for some smooching. I’m 99% sure I’m not avoiding getting close to anyone because of past scars. Many days my answer feels like “invite her in…it’ll be fun, maybe even very fun”. GENTLEMAN RULE #4 is very clear, there’s no “it’s okay for a little while” clause. And so, with the ladies I know, I guess I am not at home.