Dad cleans son’s bedroom, discovers son

(Father and son relationships can be a fickle thing as sons grow up – and as fathers grow up, too. Here is a remembrance of my son 15 years ago.)

I don’t see my son much. At 15, Austin is somewhat lost to me, a mysterious entity hidden beyond the bedroom door, indulging in the In My Room phase of a boy’s life.

His sister Delaney calls the bedroom his lair, which makes sense since there is a wild animal quality about him. When I slip a new Rolling Stone or MAD beneath his door, the magazine is yanked from view before it’s halfway through, like a raw steak pulled by paw through the cage of a lion, and I’ll hear a grunt. Other sounds emit from within Austin’s world: the frantic click of laptop keys; the chirps of a text message; TV voices; music – sometimes the same anthem of angst over and over, including, yes, the Beach Boys’ “In My Room.”

The problem with my son’s In My Room phase is it occurs In My House, which means I periodically must clean his kingdom. I am not a super-parent like those who instill within their children the virtue of personal responsibility when it comes to perpetually picking up after one’s self. I lack the magic to turn my son into something akin to an algae eater. I’ve tried. I’ve asked. I’ve cajoled. I’ve yelled. I clean his room – periodically.

A few Sundays ago, with trash bag in hand, when he was not home, I opened Austin’s door to take stock of his sanctuary of sloth. What can I say? – the room was a trash heap, the aftermath of a poltergeist party. “I’m going to need a bigger bag,” I thought, immediately wishing that instead of an Adopt-A-Highway program, there was an Adopt-A-Bedroom program to depend on. It was that messy.

I crawled through teenager rubble. Magazines were scattered about, including MADs dating back to June 2006. My parents never ordered me MAD, so I saw to it that my son was not as deprived. It’s possible he stopped leaving his room once his first MAD arrived. Alfred E. Neuman is the perfect scapegoat. I have renewed MAD thrice – and Rolling Stone. We both read each cover to cover. We are bonded by magazines, the mess reminded me.

I uncovered dozens of CDs, some in cases, some not. Some CDs were mine that he borrowed and presumably lost. He gets just as excited turning me on to a “new” band as I get turning him on to an “old” band. Music binds us, the mess reminded me.

I found his lost wallet. Inside was a lost library card. I found two lost remote controls. I found a lost, nearly-full container of Stridex beneath his bed. I found three dollars’ worth of lost change. I found his lost Chapstick. I found a lost book report. This is not a bedroom; this is a Lost and Found, I thought angrily.

I rescued many books from his messy floor. My son’s love of books tells me that I have done something right as a parent. Books bind us, the mess reminded me.

I found crumbled A&W cans, broken pencils, an empty Gatorade bottle, broken iPod ear plugs, an obsolete keyboard, DVDs and wrappers galore: Pop Tarts, Air Heads, Chewy Dipps, Laffy Taffy, Combos, Twix, Stride, Mike and Ike. I found a fossilized, half-eaten muffin and a lemon pie box with an expiration date dating back to six months earlier.

I found balled-up T-shirts that he promised to hang. I found a wadded sheet he promised to put on his mattress. I found dirty coffee cups he promised to return to the sink. I grew angrier over this room of broken promises.

I found popcorn kernels, B.Bs, and Pop Rocks in the carpet. Would the vacuum cleaner explode if I sucked up the Pop Rocks and B.Bs together? I found a Delete key, a tack, Halls wrappers, a Big Mac container, a cocklebur, and broken sunglasses. I found dried cranberries with fuzz.

It bothered me that each item, each piece of scrap, linked to something I purchased. There is a fine line between spend and spoil. I felt partially responsible for the mess.

I found loose photographs. One showed a Florida beach scene, my son wearing a spring break smile, telling me that maybe I wasn’t a fully ineffectual father since I had provided the trip that provided this smile. The last photograph found was from grade school. He was 8, I think. He looked happy and docile. His ears stuck out farther from his head then, which I had used to my advantage when picking him out from the crowd at the city pool. He even wore a button shirt for the photo, a dressy style shunned not long after. I had forgotten this earlier Austin. It was a wonderful moment. My eyes burned and grew wet. I was no longer angry.

My intent was to simply clean the room of a boy I had in some way lost to time; but, in so doing, I had somehow unearthed him from the clutter, each scattering a clue to his existence. I found him, too, in the simplicity of an old school photo. The tame boy before the mess and the boy-beast who made the mess, they’re the same boy – my boy. I love both. Cleaning his room led to a great discovery that this dad needs to make now and then. It was worth the two hours I spent in his room.

Email Scott at scottsaalman@gmail.com.