You Can Do BIG Things

 I have so much going on in my head right now. 

I'm still struggling with Elder.  That will be a forever thing, I guess.  I wonder if this pandemic has completely broken him. And I don't know what to do about it. 

One thing I know I won't do is let whatever that is get in Younger's way.  Which is kind of a struggle, because Younger is very conscious about eclipsing his brother, to the point where I can see he will start to get in the way of his own success.

Hubby tells us to take our arguing elsewhere. It's kind of hard when a) everything is an argument and b) Elder isn't going anywhere except within his very limited orbit. 

I still have the FOO stuff, but that will always be going on in the background to some extent. I'm largely putting that on ignore, because I don't have the energy for it. 

So Younger capped his marching band career this past week with a banquet.  We all had a good time, he with his bandmates, and me with a particularly awesome table of parents.  I remember our first two banquets wherein I didn't really know any of the parents with a couple exceptions, then two years ago wherein we were late getting there so sat at a table by ourselves in the the back.  This year was pretty cool. 

Even though we had a much smaller band, it was a lot of fun, and the speeches the student leaders gave were amusing, touching, and full of the usual teenage stuff.  And the kids each got a thoughtful remembrance of the season by the band director as awards were given out.

Hubby recorded G's moment, and I have watched a few times. It was memorable in that the band director (bless her) was looking to be encouraging, and her last line was to "Remember, you can do things."

Then the former director busted his shoes for his often telling him that G was out once he got his letter.  (That got laughs--anyone who remembers G two years ago remembers that about him). And then he went on to say, not directly, but if you listen, it's there--that he was grateful the staff saw he could do more than he, director, thought G could do. 

You see, this is the struggle--people think neither of my kids CAN, so they are given as little as possible to do. This is going to stand in both of their ways. Elder either believes he can't, or he doesn't want to, or he wants to get away with doing as little as possible. I can already see in G's job that the same thing is happening to him (but he doesn't want to tip that because he sees his easy ride as a good thing).

So this makes my struggle to get them both to that "gainful, full-time competitive employment" place really, really difficult. 

I don't know how to make moving forward matter to elder. 

I don't know how to keep that from spilling over into everyone else's capacity to manage.

All I want for Christmas is for him to have a spark of internal motivation. 

He is all about that fucking carrot.