New Driver, Slow Down -- a tribute to Max

I’ve said some things about this kid over the years, when he was little, his love of money, meat and Mama, about him as a goalie, and about his wholehearted adorableness, but I have not bragged on my middleman enough lately, and it’s overdue. 

This year, when the pandemic hit, the kids agreeably locked down to protect their high-risk family member. They gave up friends and sports, which if you know Max, who my nephew simply called “Ball” for years, that’s a big ask, and we never even had to ask. They volunteered to homeschool until a vaccine was available. Not only did Max decide to homeschool for 11th grade, he decided he would take his online classes from colleges, shrewdly reasoning he could be ticking away at his first year credits from home. 

Max has always been my easiest kid to homeschool. When he was little, he demanded that I set out his work stack before I went to bed so he could pop up before dawn and cruise through the everything before anyone woke up, ticking all his boxes, leaving his day blissfully free from ‘have-to’. Later, he was motivated to skip 7thgrade and join his self-identified peers in 8th, he shouldered the work of an entire school year in eight intense summer weeks. I remember speaking with the cyber-coordinator from the state and her saying dubiously, “It’s going to be at least 35 hours of work each week. I don’t know that he can do it.” And without a doubt, I knew he could, and of course, he did. 

This time, we looked through online course catalogs and picked classes that most closely lined up with an 11thgrade honors track, while also fulfilling some typical freshman year college credits. I helped him build a schedule without synchronous conflicts and then I got out of his way. He ordered books and taped syllabi and schedules to his bedroom wall to keep himself on track for the three upper-level asynchronous classes. 

Occasionally, he’d ask me to look over an essay for an English, history or psych class, or J to read his response for macroeconomics. J has been teaching him about investing, Max loosening the purse strings and watching things grow on RobinHood. And then for the rest of the year, we stepped back, engaged in all the adult busywork of a pandemic/country in crisis—gardening, working from home, obsessive news-watching, bread baking and doomscrolling. 

We circled the wagons for our high-risk person. We mostly stayed home, were vigilant out in the world, and Max quietly ticked through all those courses, took his driver’s test, grew another three inches, dyed his hair, shaved an eyebrow, pierced his ears, worked out in our home gym daily (nightly!), followed Piper into rock climbing, and spent a ton of time making 3am breakfast sandwiches and playing Rocket League with his siblings. He proudly wears the ashes of his late grandfather around his neck, the one who told me I should have made his middle name Earnest, because he is.

This past week, Max finished nearly an entire year’s worth of college credits with straight A’s. He got his driver’s license, and with our high-risk person now vaxxed, is returning to prep school to play lacrosse and rejoin his friends. He and his brother have big plans for the future, the house they’re going to share, and ongoing debate about what to name their two future cats.

When I think about this kid’s work ethic, about the unquestioning sacrifice and the commitment to his family and his future, my heart soars. I love you, Mac-Max, but please, as I typically mis-sang the lyrics of the pop song we were belting out as we made breakfast for dinner the other night:

Hey you, relax, slow down--don’t grow, so fast.