It feels like everything in our house has settled into what will become a familiar routine. Joel has started working 2 jobs--one at King Street Grille and a second shift at Boone's Bar and Grill. He works about 35 hours a week at each place, so he's rarely around for dinner and the like, but he has made sure that both places know he has class on Monday and Wednesday nights and is not available to work. His current schedule has him off on Mondays, at class on Monday nights, a double on Tuesdays (keep in mind, a double is King Street Grille from 10am-5pm and Boone's from 5pm-3am), Wednesday dayshift at King Street Grille from 10-5, class Wednesday night from 6-8, Thursday dayshift off (we have deemed this 'study time,' although neither of us are here to enforce, so the amount of actual studying done is questionable), Thursday night at Boone's from 5pm-3am, and straight doubles Fri, Sat, and Sun, with an early close of 8pm on Sunday. If nothing else, Joel is a hard worker. He seems to have a (vague) idea of where he wants to be, and has learned that not much else other than hard work will get you there. I've heard him say numerous times that he never ever wants to go back to jail again, that it was the scariest place he's ever been, and I think he's proving to both us and himself that he has left that old self by the wayside. Perhaps this realization seems a bit delayed, after knowing him for a year and a half and moving him here with us, but it's hard to not have that nagging doubt that the person he was might still be buried in there somewhere, and come back and destroy all of us when it all just becomes too much for him. I'm starting to believe though, that he's moved on and grown up a bit. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of growing up for him to do, but it feels like he's headed in the right direction.
Brandan and I have been informed multiple times since we moved in with Joel that we are old. Being under 30, this is hard to swallow--I am old in someone else's eyes. Wasn't I just here in college, in my jeans and flip flops, headed to class? I'm back, and I'm still in my jeans and flip flops--but I'm no longer part of the heartbeat of this town. The current of energy comes from the college students, and they are all cohesive, coming together as a unit, and keeping this place alive, like a heartbeat. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have moved on. It simply feels like it wasn't that long ago that I was a part of it all. Now, I'm being told by someone in that group that I am an outsider, an 'old person.' And while a close look in the mirror reveals some fine lines around the eyes that weren't there a few years ago, I don't FEEL old. So, I resign myself to the fact that perhaps I'm not quite as old as Joel makes me out to be, and not quite as ancient as I make myself out to be after being told I'm old. It's easy to forget how much of a difference 10 years makes at that age. While I think Joel over exaggerates ("Society has changed since you guys were young, relationships are different, you don't know how things are now"), I remind myself we are of the same generation, and 10 years from now, when he is our age, he will realize that he's just getting started on life.
So, I try as much as possible to be 'cool and hip,' and at the same time let Joel be 19. As much as it drives me crazy when he comes out of his room, sits down at the table, scarfs down a meal, and immediately gets up and goes back to his room, I remind myself that this is his first opportunity at being a normal kid. And for a 19-year old, that is normal behavior. He comes with a history of living in a trailer in Colorado with 13 people, and living in a car with 3 other people. He comes from foster care, abusive parents, drug and alcohol abuse. It's a small miracle that he's come out as unbroken as he is. So when something that presents itself as a typical teenager trait drives me crazy, I do my best to let it slide, and let him be a normal, sullen, withdrawn, untalkative teenager, just like the rest.
In the meantime, we will continue to be "the old people," who give him advice that he doesn't want or doesn't think is relevant to his life. But 10 years from now, when he is "old," and has the sudden realization that all those little snippets of advice given over dinner, or in the car on the way to work, or down the hall as the door closes halfway through my sentence were actually accurate, I will know I wasn't wasting my breath. I was simply passing on what is meant to be passed on. The advice my parents gave me, about life, when I thought they knew nothing. Turns out they knew it all. And when I think he's not listening, I think about myself, and how I didn't think I was listening, but now realize I was, all along.
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