up in middle of the night again

2:50 AM.  I wake up.

I think of the TV public service ad, “It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?”

Alexander is not home.  He left around ten to go to Peter’s, to hang out on his roof with a few friends.

I text and he answers.

Huh?!

Was he expecting not to tell me?  I call him.

“I was charging my phone; it was out of batteries.”  Yes.  Of course.  And my son is the only one of his friends who has a phone.

Then Alexander gives me some convoluted story about how he’s at Maddie’s with a few of his friends.  It’s late. He’s tired.  Maddie lives on 110^th and Broadway.  He’s staying there.

I question him. I ask to speak with Maddie.  “Where do you live?” I ask Maddie.  “Hold on, your mom wants to speak to you,” and she hands the phone back to Alexander.

“Okay, Maddie doesn’t live at 110^th and Broadway, but if I told you she lives at 93^rd and Madison, which is so much closer, you wouldn’t let me stay.”  After ten more minutes of unpleasant conversation, I tell him it’s fine to stay and I’ll see him in the morning.

Five minutes later my phone rings.  “Okay, I’ve decided to come home.”

“What?  What happened that all of a sudden you want to come home?”

“I’m more awake now, and the room I’m staying in is too hot.”

“Okay, but I don’t want you walking home.  Take a cab.”  Maddie’s a little over a mile from where we live.  New York City may be safe, but I don’t want my son roaming its streets at 3:15 in the morning.

“Okay.”

I know my son.  He’ll tell me he’s taking a cab but then walk because it’s cheaper and he’s invincible.

I say, “Call me as soon as you pull up to the building so I can look out my window and see you get out of the cab.”

We hang up.

Two minutes later my phone rings again.  “Will you pay for the cab?”

“No,” I say.  Last night Alexander went out with friends and they met up at a local bar.  Surely he can pay for the cab.

We hang up.

I get another text.  “I am not coming home.”

He doesn’t.

I was up at this hour when Alexander was an infant.  No one told me then that getting up in the middle of the night kicks in again when your child is home from college.