The Days When Love Is Harder

My fifteen-year-old grandson had one job.

Be home at 3:30.

I had a lot going on that day and needed backup when his younger brother got off the school bus. He agreed to be there. He had also agreed to take out the trash.

At 3:15, I pulled up to an empty house. I was early, so I wasn't concerned. Maybe he was on his way. The trash was still there. That was less surprising. At fifteen, he seems to regard chores as suggestions rather than actual responsibilities.

At 3:30, the bus rolled up.

His younger brother climbed off, excited to see me. Still no fifteen-year-old.

He ran inside, put his school things away, grabbed his scooter and came back outside. I watched him race around while we waited. At 4:30, another bus arrived carrying the middle child. Two out of three.

I called him. No answer.

I texted him. Nothing.

I tried both several more times. Silence. It was time to go looking for number three.

Phones are useful things when the teenager you're looking for happens to be carrying one. We found his location. Thirty-five minutes away. We headed in his direction. At first, his location was moving toward us. Maybe he'd realized what time it was. Maybe he was coming home.

About fifteen minutes into our drive, he changed direction. Now it looked like he might be heading toward the mall. So we changed direction too. As we got closer, the vehicle he was apparently riding in passed us going the opposite way. There was only one small problem.

I had no idea what vehicle he was in.

I made a U-turn. We followed the little dot.

McDonald's?

No.

The park?

No.

Finally, a gas station. The dot stopped moving. I circled the gas station twice before I spotted him sitting in the back seat of a car. I pulled my vehicle in front of theirs and blocked them in. Then I calmly got out. I asked him to get into my car.

He refused.

I asked him if he'd been home at 3:30 to meet his brother like he'd agreed. "Yeah. I was there until my sister got home. Then I left." Interesting. I looked over at my car. His brother and sister had rolled down their windows.

"Was he there?"

"No."

It wasn't exactly a sophisticated criminal enterprise. I opened his door and asked him again to get into my car. It took a few minutes. Eventually, he did. I didn't lecture him on the drive.

When we got back to my house, I handed him a computer. His mom had given me the information about the homework he needed to finish, so he sat down and started working.

I started making dinner. And we talked.

Calmly.

About where he'd been. About what he'd agreed to do.  About the decision he'd made. About the lie. Then came the part I wasn't prepared for.

"No one loves me. I'm just a horrible person."

I bowed my head. Took a breath. I cared enough to find you, I told him.

I brought you home.

I gave you what you needed to do your homework.

I'm making you dinner.

I'm trying to understand the decision you made today.

I'm here.

Your brother and sister are here.

Your grandfather is here.

Your mom is stuck at work, worried sick about you.

We all love you. We may think you make bad decisions sometimes, but we never, for a second, stop loving you. Then I told him something else.

“It hurt my feelings when you said nobody loves you.”

This time, he bowed his head. He didn't say anything.

Neither did I.

There is something particularly exhausting about loving a fifteen-year-old. If an adult repeatedly lied to me, ignored commitments, created chaos and then insisted nobody cared about them, I would know what to do. I've gotten pretty good at recognizing things I don't want in my life.

But he's fifteen.

And I love him endlessly.

I can also occasionally think he's being an asshole. Apparently those things can coexist.

I look at him and see a boy who is lost. He's smart. Creative. Funny. He is desperate for freedom while showing absolutely no interest in doing any of the things required to earn it. He wants to make his own decisions without being responsible for what happens after he makes them.

He wants independence and rescue. Sometimes within the same afternoon.

Maybe that's fifteen.

I don't know.

What I do know is that I don't want to confuse understanding why he's struggling with pretending his choices don't matter.  He wasn't home at 3:30. He didn't do what he promised.  He lied to my face. Those things happened.

But "I made a bad decision" and "I'm a horrible person nobody loves" aren't the same sentence.

I don't want him learning that they are. I don't want him believing love means nobody holds him accountable. And I don't want him believing accountability means love has disappeared.

Maybe that's the strange part of loving someone through a version of themselves that isn't particularly easy to be around.

Sometimes love doesn't feel very loving to the person receiving it. Sometimes it tracks your phone across town. Sometimes it makes a U-turn. Sometimes it circles a gas station twice. Sometimes it blocks in the car you're sitting in and waits until you finally get out. Sometimes it hands you a computer and tells you to finish your homework. Sometimes it tells you that you made a bad decision without allowing you to turn that decision into a definition of who you are. And sometimes, after all of that, it makes you dinner.

We ate.

Nothing profound happened over the meal. He was still fifteen. I was still exhausted. When it was time to go, I drove him home.

I don't know who he'll become. Right now, I see a boy trying very hard to figure out where he belongs while simultaneously trying to escape every boundary around him. So I'll keep doing what I can. I'll love the smart parts and the funny parts and the creative parts.

I'll love the lost parts too.

I just won't pretend that loving him means letting him get away with everything. Sometimes I will give him space. Sometimes I will let him make his own mistakes. And apparently, sometimes I'll chase a little dot across town until I find him sitting in the back seat of a car at a gas station.

Because I can love him.

And still come find him.