late night

I go for a late afternoon manicure.  When I get home, around 5:30, Alexander says, “Hey.  I’m going to a seven o’clock movie with Daniel, can you make dinner now?”  “My nails are wet,” I tell him.  “You’ll have to wait a half hour.”  I love his response.  “Next time you’re going to get a manicure that will incapacitate you, please don’t do it around dinner time.”

So instead of my cooking, Alexander makes pasta with fresh parmigiano.  Then he’s gone. 

I text Alexander around 11:30.  He’s with Daniel and a group of friends from high school. He’ll be home later he texts.

I tell myself, he’s 21; he lives without me most of the time; and I shouldn’t worry when he goes out.  But I can’t sleep soundly until I know my son is home.

I wake up at 3:15 and Alexander’s not in.  I text him and get no response.  I call and no one picks up.  I vacillate between anger that his phone isn’t on and fear that he’s been kidnapped by Al-Qaeda and lying in an underground terrorist cell somewhere.

Do I call his friend’s home?  I can’t do that; I don’t want to alarm anyone. I don’t have any of his friends’ cell numbers.  Now I’m wide-awake.  What if he’s fallen asleep somewhere and I can’t reach him?  That leaves the whole night to stay up imagining all sorts of dire scenarios.

Finally, around 3:30, Alexander walks into my room and says hi. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t hear my phone.  I walked home with Maddie, Ethan, Peter and Daniel; everyone was going back to Ethan’s house.”  Should I be grateful he didn’t go?

This morning I leave at 10 to meet Ruth and Andrea.  We are going to the Neue Galerie to see: Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937 (which, by the way, is excellent).

Alexander is asleep when I leave.  And also when I come home, four hours later.  I like knowing where he is, even if it’s not where I want him to be.