I<\/span> am sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, crying on my plastic menu.<\/p>\n

It is my son\u2019s freshman year and he is home for holiday break. The menorah is up, the Christmas tree is decorated and there are presents underneath. This year I bought him a musical dreidel and a gingerbread man, like I\u2019ve done all his life. There are chocolate coins too. And more things under the tree. We are an interfaith family. An atheist interfaith family.<\/p>\n

After Christmas at our home in Florida we are going to NY until New Years. Then, Bill and I will come home and Stephen will stay in NY for his January project, making a movie with his classmates from Oberlin College to be shot on the streets of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Stephen is silent on the way home from the airport. I make small talk. How was the semester? Do you know your grades? Won\u2019t it be fun to spend two whole weeks together?<\/p>\n

He refuses to eat the lasagna I made because he had a slice of pizza at the airport and the he doesn\u2019t eat two similar meals on the same day. He used to eat spaghetti three times a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would you like? An omelet? Sir fry veggies?\u201d He\u2019s a vegetarian.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need protein.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStir fried veggies with tofu?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTofu is soy. Soy is full of GMOs.\u00a0 I stopped eating it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the menorah all lit up, and the tree and look, a musical dreidel and a gingerbread man. Remember how you always loved gingerbread men?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe later.\u201d He goes to his room. I hear music.<\/p>\n

I knock and am given permission to enter. \u201cHi, what are you listening to?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing you ever heard of.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He announces he will not observe any of the holidays. \u201cThey are capitalistic plots of the bourgeoisie designed to make people keep consuming. You made me a consumer by buying me all those toys when I was little.\u00a0 I am not bourgeois like you. Look around at all your stuff. Your oriental rugs. Your Limoges. Your closet full of shoes. All a person needs is a pair of pants and a tee-shirt. Maybe two tee-shirts. Look at your endless wealth that you got through exploitation. I\u2019m an anarchist now and I don\u2019t believe in possessions or celebrations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked for our money. You know the endless hours I work,\u201d says Bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we didn\u2019t exploit anyone. Your father\u2019s patients love him. And librarians don\u2019t exploit people. I lend books for free, dammit.\u201d<\/p>\n

I want to tell him more. I want to remind him that of the 1600 students at Oberlin, someone must be richer than us. Like the famous Hollywood film director\u2019s two kids who go there, or the son of the Hollywood couple, his friend whose father is a vice president on Wall Street, or the heiress to an organic diary conglomerate in San Francisco. Their milk is in our refrigerator.<\/p>\n

Maybe he will feel better in NY. We fly there on the 26^{th<\/sup>.\u00a0 We stay at the brownstone of a friend who is on a Caribbean vacation.<\/p>\n}

For dinner we go to a Vietnamese restaurant on Amsterdam. It\u2019s packed. It\u2019s holiday time on the Upper West Side and the Jews need their Asian food.\u00a0 Finally, we get a table. We are reading the menus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you having?\u201d I ask Stephen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is hard for me to tell you,\u201d he begins. \u201cBut I don\u2019t believe in long-distance relationships. All of my friends are in Oberlin. I see them every day. You two are the only people I have a long distance relationship with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re your parents,\u201d I tell him, \u201cnot long-distance relationships. You didn\u2019t want to go to college in Florida. We let you go wherever you wanted. A lot of your friends had to stay in Florida. But we saved so you could go anywhere you wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat may be true. But, I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll be seeing much of me for a long time. For years maybe. I hate Florida and I\u2019m not coming home for any more vacations. I only came home for this one because they closed the dorms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The waiter comes over with a pot of tea and three cups. Obliviously, he asks, \u201cdo you need a few more minutes to decide?\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lost my appetite. I forget that Stephen is 18 and he doesn\u2019t have a clue, that his prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for empathy and foreseeing the consequences of one\u2019s behavior, won\u2019t develop for another eight or ten years.\u00a0 And I can\u2019t read the damn menu because of these tears that will come and go for the next five or six years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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