Beer

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention,  but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza." --Dave Barry

 

When your kid is a teenager, and he starts acting like someone you don’t personally know, (think Ferris Bueller or any of the characters from Invasion of the Body Snatchers) there isn’t much you can do. “Who ARE you?” was the running commentary in my head from my middle child’s thirteenth year to approximately the twentieth. The best you can hope for is a good night’s sleep to buoy up your strength because tomorrow it’s only going to get worse. I don’t care how sweet and adorable your kid is, how often he’s scored the winning point at basketball, how many AP classes she’s in, or the fact that he’s been chosen as first chair in the school orchestra –from time to time he or she will shatter all your hopes and dreams and make you question why you ever had children, and you’ll end up furiously scraping off the stickers on your car that read "Proud Mom" and "I (Heart) My Kids". The good news is you won’t feel that way forever. At some point, when your Karmic past reaches equilibrium with your present, or the child in question has a more fully connected frontal lobe, whichever comes first, he or she will begin to change back into the sparkling, friendly person you recall from their childhood.  I know this because Max has returned to his smart, considerate and funny, thoughtful self. (Cliff, my oldest, hasn't actually done anything worse than steal my breakfast sandwich. My third, however, Olivia, is eighteen and has only recently become “not-Olivia”. I will let you know how that goes.)

Here are eleven words you never want to hear over the phone from your teen’s mouth: “Mom, can you come get me at the police station?” Insert shocked pause here, during which you squint your eyes and sigh. “Please?” Or the equally popular, “Uhh, hey mom. Soooo, I’m sort of a little in trouble.” 

We unfortunately heard those eleven words more than once (but fewer than five times) from our middle child, Max, who will no doubt be really mad at me for telling you all this. Let me preface the rest of the story with the assurance that Max didn’t do anything his father or I, or you for that matter, didn’t do when we were teenagers. It’s just that there were fewer rules and laws back then, (I'm speaking of the 70's here) and the police were more likely to chase you out of the woods or off the high school football field than to put you into the back of their squad car. “Go on you kids! Get outta here before I call your parents.” Then you would frantically toss the beer can you were holding, or the funny cigarette perhaps, and beat it. No adult would be the wiser.

Once I expounded on the uniquely skillful talent of our town police officers and their apparent use of crazy laser-like "Max Radar" that led directly to him and his friends whenever he was about to do something foolish(bringing a 30-pack of Coors to a party directly across the street from eagle-eyed neighbors, for instance), he was a lot more careful. Plus, one mention in the police blotter was plenty for me, and I reminded him each time he went out that I was tired of going incognito whenever I had to go to the local Stop ‘n Shop to buy groceries.  

Then, the most wonderful thing happened in the merry,merry month of May! My son turned twenty-one. Within hours, he had gone to the Registry of Motor Vehicles and exchanged the old, junior license for a new one that proudly announces his status as someone who cannot ever get arrested again for being “a minor in possession.” He has grown to cherish it and proudly flash it about to every restaurant server and liquor store clerk with whom he comes in contact. It’s a beautiful thing.

The other most wonderful thing, if there can be two “mosts”, is the newfound connection between father and son. I call it “The Beer Alliance”. This consanguinity gives them endless opportunities to discuss Max’s newfound expertise on a subject about which they both feel extremely enthusiastic. It’s both an unexpected and delightfully surprising aspect of Max’s adult standing.

 Ken and Max have a close, easy-going relationship, but they are very different. Ken’s get-it-done personality exists in marked contrast to Max’s I’ll-get-around-to-it-eventually one. Where Ken tends to think in a linear fashion, precise and logical, Max has the heart and soul of an artist, and arrives at answers and decisions through the thoughtful processes of a more sentient being.  Max looks at the “big picture” and then breaks it down into manageable parts, while Ken analytically looks at the pieces and then creates the whole.  Left brain vs. right brain stuff. Happily, Max’s and Ken’s teenage years do hold some commonalities, and that’s one of the saving graces of their relationship. These commonalities gave Ken infinite patience when the eleven-word phone calls would interrupt dinner and/or require him to drive to the Franklin P.D.  in the deep freeze of New England weather.    His reaction was the counterbalance to mine, which included expletives, hand-wringing, and staring at Max's baby picture, wondering where it had all gone wrong.

On Father’s day, Max’s gift to Ken was a six-pack of beer, St. Bernardus Tripel to be precise, and a beer chalice.  Max had turned twenty-one just one month before, and the novelty of legally purchasing alcohol was as exhilarating as the blush of first love. It was the perfect offering on a day Ken holds sacred, having lost his own dad before Ken turned fifteen. My husband never had the opportunity to proudly present his father with the gift of a specialty beer he had himself chosen, a simple but transcendent symbolic representation of guyhood, that bastion of male bonding.  His memories of his father do not include matching beer foam mustaches or animated pronouncements of which beer deserves high praise, or even a taste test at the kitchen table over dinner. Boy Scouts, Little League, the Smithtown Volunteer Firefighters Parades, and chess games, yes, but beer summits for Ken and his dad were not meant to be.

I’m inclined to think that Max’s misadventures with beer as a teenager were the precursor to and preparation for his eventual tenure as a beer aficionado.  Ken has become a beneficiary of Max’s expertise, leading to a meeting and melding of the minds—the engineer’s and the artist’s. Have you heard the joke about the pessimist, the optimist and the engineer? The pessimist sees the beer chalice as half-empty, while the optimist sees it as half-full. The engineer, however, sees a liquid containment device twice as big as it needs to be. On this point I believe Ken and Max would agree.

 Fathers and sons, as the sons grow into men and the fathers wonder where the time has gone, must continually strive to find common ground, steer true north for new, ever-evolving avenues of connection. The father must see past the son’s transgressions which have served as learning experiences, because truly, they aren’t so different, at least not where it counts. Some things are meant to be after all, and those times when you question why you ever had children happen far less often than those times when you are incredibly grateful for the gift of those children. They are the best of what life has to offer, despite the occasional hiccups. The memories we will end up holding closest are the good ones, really, like chess games and a dad's first sip of St. Bernardus Tripel. I suppose you can say that's the key to a happy life--making memories and preserving those which are most precious and appreciating the love that dwells in each and every one.