Conscience

There’s something to be said for a little guilt.

All day, E. has been bending over backwards to be loving and helpful and kind. I love my son with all my heart. Deep down, he is a good, decent kid. But these days he is surly and provocative more than loving and considerate. When he is smiles warmly at me, offers to fetch something, walk the dog or give me a hug, something’s up.

Of course, I didn’t realize what was up until I smelled the essence of cinnamon-apple and later, of sandalwood incense, floating up from the basement. The basement usually smells of bad breath and mold, so the uncharacteristic fragrances stopped me: I'd smelled them a week ago, the morning after E. had had a party. He'd had a party last night too.

Bingo.

None of this dawned on me until this morning, when I descended into the basement, where two exhausted cans of Glade air freshener lay on the floor and the windows were wide open.

“Why are the windows open”? I asked, innocently.

“It got hot,” E replied, instantly. 

“The incense smells nice,” I offered.

“Yeah.” He sounded relieved.

E. has always maintained that he neither smokes pot nor drinks alcohol and I, however naive, have always chosen to believe him. He is a varsity athlete, hoping for a college scholarship. He is driven and disciplined. He works out like a fiend and has the musculature to show for it. When I told him F. and I were going out, he'd asked that we return in time, intent on following the law regarding parental supervision of underage teenage parties. He also insisted that once home, we make ourselves scarce.

Shortly after midnight, when I went to make myself tea, E. emerged from the basement, looking a little red-eyed. All was quiet and I wondered if he’d been smoking. That's when I noticed the same hint of apple-cinnamon I'd smelled the week before. A light bulb illuminated over my head and, realizing what I'd missed before (and feeling like a fool), I went to bed. 

E. was up early this morning, playing with the dog and cleaning the basement, all without my having to hound him. Later, when F. and I were both in the kitchen, he pulled us in for a three-way hug.

Letting him know that I was (finally) on to him, felt momentarily tempting, but it was a self-serving fantasy: I wanted to prove I was not only clued-in, but cool. Yet, the line between the space where E. lets me in and shuts me out is fine. Was outing him worth the risk of alienating him? Exposing him would not stop him from being a normal 16-year-old, it would just stop him from being that 16-year-old in the safety of his home, with his banished but protective parents upstairs.  

A heavy conscience probably triggered the warmth and responsibility E. showed this morning. Still, I know that he is grateful for our trust in him, however blind. I also know that this trust, coupled with our love, has instilled in him both a sense of freedom and of obligation: to be a normal, boundary-testing teen, and to honor a personal, still-evolving code of ethics that makes us proud of who he is, and he of himself.