Behind closed doors

By RICK RYCKELEY
Contributing Writer

A person much smarter than me once said, “A man is not measured on how he starts things. He is measured on how he finishes them.”

How true, and how timely, for we just dropped The Boy off at college today. He starts down the road of higher education next week, a road that will have many twists and turns. Waiting for him at the end are a college degree, possibly a wife, and the maturity that only four more years of studying will bring. Years that will task his strengths and weaknesses and eventually make The Boy into a man.

We wish him the best of luck, but a few times over the last year I really didn’t think he’d make it. To be quite honest, I really didn’t think I would either.   

The Boy, like most teenagers, has spent the better part of the last year at our house up in his room with the door closed. He has come down only for the briefest of times, for life’s necessities: to grab food and drink, to use the bathroom or take an occasional shower, and to argue with his dad. There have been lots of those of late, arguments which have become louder and more frequent as the time for his departure drew closer.

He sits behind his closed door watching television, playing video games, working on his computer, or chatting endlessly on his cell phone with his friends. They too sit behind their closed doors. He sits behind his closed door hiding from the world. He sits behind his closed door hiding from his father who in the last year has somehow become the stupidest man on the planet and his favorite target for endless, senseless arguments. Arguments about everything and nothing. Arguments with a father who, of late, has been the impediment to him growing up. Arguments which wasted the precious time they had left together.   

The Boy sits behind his closed door. Hiding from himself, while at the same time trying to find who he really is.

After dropping him off at school, The Wife and I return home at about two in the afternoon, plenty of time to still get in a half-day’s work. We have four years of college to start paying for. But before I get started - before I get on with the rest of my life - there is something important I must do.

Walking up the stairs to The Boy’s empty room, I remember. I remember how small he was the first time I saw him in the hospital. I remember the first time he said “Dad I lobe you.” I remember his first taste of Co-Cola and the funny face he made as the bubbles tickled his nose.

I remember how, when he finally caught that elusive blue tail lizard, he screamed as its tail fell off (a defense mechanism used to get away from the excited grasp of little boys). I remember another scream, one of pain, as the baby snapping turtle clamped down and wouldn’t let go of two curious little fingers that got too close.  I remember Little League baseball games and waiting for him through high school football practices that went well into the night, practices that helped to temper The Boy and started him well onto his way to becoming a man.

I remember the divorce that almost tore my soul apart and the look on his tear-stained, crestfallen face as I drove away. I remember two years later how he chased the parachute from a rocket shot so high into the sky that it almost disappeared from sight. That was the first meeting between him and his soon-to-be stepmom. When asked later that night what he thought of the lady he had shot rockets off with in the high school parking lot, he replied with a smile on his face, “Dad, I like her; she’s funny.” The Wife and I were married three months later. The Boy was the proudest usher in the church.

As I close the door to his room, I remember every bit of our 18 short years together. All the good and all the bad. It seems it was just yesterday that I held him for the very first time in my arms. When he looked up at me with those clear blue eyes, the memories started. Memories which to this day have never stopped.

I close the door to his room and slowly turn away. That way, for the next few years, whenever I pass the stairwell and glance up, I can imagine The Boy - he’s still up there. Hiding behind that closed door. Trying to find himself.

And hopefully it will help to muffle the emptiness I now feel inside as the echoes of the memories of him and our life together flow down the steps, reverberate through the hallway, and engulf each room with the sadness of a time which will never come again.

A time gone forever - kept alive now only in memories.