Andrew is sitting on the floor right now, counting cash. There are piles of bills and coin around him on the floor. Allie is helping.
They are working together with her family to run a concession stand this summer. It’s a great learning experience, a couple steps up from the lemonade stand he never ran. Andrew fronted the cash, they’ll all work, and they’ll split the proceeds at the end of the summer. And every night will feel like a date.
Andrew has his real job this summer as well, working at Soccer Etc as an assistant manager. And tomorrow he interviews for an internship at a local newspaper later in the summer.
It makes for a busy schedule. He’ll come close to working 40 hours a week every week. Some weeks he’ll work 50. Almost like full time. When he gets a day off, he sleeps late, plays with friends, and crashes.
There are times I wish I could work 40 hours a week. There are times I wish I could relax like that.
And it is tempting to point out that by living at home there are benefits he gets.
And I realized today that I’m jealous of Andrew. Not of how many hours more a week I spend working and how many hours less I get to spend sleeping. No, I’m jealous of his ability to relax, to play, to have fun.
It is tempting to pile on guilt, to help him understand how much we do. At the same time, I’m aware that I don’t relax, I don’t just stop and crash. I’m a recovering pleaser, a recovering constantly busy person. And as I write this post at midnight, I am aware that the recovery isn’t very far along.
Somehow, I understood today, I need to help Andrew keep the ability to play. He works hard, he works well, he works responsibly. In fact, he was just talking to a colleague who was trying to get him to work tomorrow. But Andrew said no. And that is a wonderful skill.
Somehow, if I can help him not get addicted to work, that will be a good thing.
He won’t have to recover from it later.
by Jon Swanson
Photo graciously provided by the author, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
7 responses so far ↓
Anna // May 19, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I think, perhaps, you don’t need to help Andrew so much as you need him to hlp you.
Anna // May 19, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Hey auto emoticon. kinda cool, but I prefer the “old fashioned” keyboard symbols.
paul merrill // May 19, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I think it’s partly a generational thing. His generation knows how to play better than ours.
jon // May 19, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Anna, I think so. I’m working on that watching.
Paul, I think, to their credit, you are right. And in playing, what can they teach us about working?
Rob // May 19, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I love this process of discovering ourselves through our children. Whether we are recognizing their strengths and wishing you possess the same or seeing the ‘things you wish you could change about yourself’ reflected in their behavior, it is interesting.
I am with Anna, if Andrew can carve out his time well now by saying “no”, he’s doing better than most. Hopefully he will continue to have the same skill as he grows.
Perhaps too, your recognition of this as a strength of Andrew’s will go farther than a desire to warn and protect him from becoming ‘addicted to work’. Perhaps your ’somehow’ is in this story of supporting his sound decision making.
Stu Mark // May 19, 2008 at 4:13 pm
My sister had a child issue (a positive one, but a stressful one) and she called me for support. I reminded her of what she taught me, which in turn she learned from Gibran:
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”
That has helped me on so many levels, to let go of the fear that I am not serving my children in the right way. When you say that you hope that you can help Andrew not become addicted to work, I imagine that he will or will not, based on his own decisions, which will be based, in part, not so much on what you tell him, but upon how you react to your own work stress. As he is his own person, he will look at you as an entire person, not just a person made up of your own words. And your reaction to your work will influence him only as far as the will you have instilled in him. – In other words, from what you say about him, he’ll be fine, no matter how much you work. (just a thought, not to be taken internally)
That which I don’t want to do, I do. « Levite Chronicles // May 30, 2008 at 12:57 am
[...] week and a half ago, I wrote about Andrew. More accurately, I’ve been writing about Andrew for three months. But a week and a half ago [...]
Leave a Comment