He was 18 years old

He was 18 years old.He does not plan to be a candidate for double occupation.He confirmed it to me the day before his birthday.This means that most of my father's job was not a failure.

When I got 18 years old, to symbolically formalize our majority, my parents invited us, my twin brother and I, in a resto-bar in the city center.Did we then go out to celebrate with friends at Café Campus, Foufs or Purple Haze, our favorite drinking debits from the 1990s?The memory is misty.

I hoped to perpetuate this family tradition.It will not be possible.The bars are closed.Restaurants too.The 18 years of son were celebrated at home, in a small committee.We got used to it.Like many other families, we have spent covidian festivals, in quarantine, isolated each on our side.Ten days to sleep, classify papers, eat away at my brake and put away books, locked in my office.My Guantánamo ...

Speaking of Cuba, at 18, I made my first trip without my family, with friends from Cégep.Two weeks in a shabby hotel near Havana.We hadn't been a plane or party on board.On the other hand, an improvised course of cocktails in the afternoon had skid late in the evening.I had to be broken out drunk from a nightclub to my hotel room by two soldiers, arms over it, arms below.I cooked my rum and coke for two days.

The transition to adulthood is not always glorious.That the one who has never sinned throws the first beer.

Fortunately, I was 18 years old at a time when social networks were not virtual.My son was born a few months after I bought my first cell phone, my first digital camera, my first car and my first house, where we still live, moreover.

Fiston, I repeat to reassure myself, will not be a candidate for OD (Omicron-Delta for friends).Parental honor is except.I have often repeated to him that he was free to choose the job that fascinates him.It is not given to all.It’s a privileged luxury.Life is short and work requires a lot of time.But if he had had the misfortune to orient himself towards reality TV, I do not know if I would have recovered.

He was 18 years old.It is more lucid and informed than I was at his age.I taught him early the importance of drinking water between the sweet alcoholic drinks that teens love ...

He lives in quasi-autarky in his half-sous-ground, with a few brush and hammer blows near being renovated, almost a year after a backdrop of sewer (which was ample question in this chronicle).

He does his own laundry, works and studies, manages his own expenses.He even applied for a credit card.Here he is ready for the adult world.

Everything is not perfect, obviously.He was never good at storage.His room gives the impression that a bomb has exploded, quips his brother.Last month, he left a bag of clothes he had just bought, in the corner of the kitchen.In the exact place and at the very moment when the trash can be put before putting them on Sunday.I did not do one or two ...

Storage, on the contrary, calms me down.It’s an activity that frees my mind.Our Covidian holiday leave has produced four large recycling bags, so many poubelle bags and quantity of boxes filled with books and DVDs to give.Everything you can accumulate in a house in 18 years.And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I plunged into our album of digital photos.Some 30,000 images that retrace the course of son, from birth to adulthood.Taken from a sudden anxiety that these memories disappear in an inaccessible cloud.I pulled a half-hour slideshow, only with the hundredth of the pictures.

In the photos, he smiles a lot.I don't think it's a misleading smile.He had a happy childhood, it seems to me.He's a young adult who smiles.He's going pretty well.This is not the case for several people of his age, who tear them off with their studies, their parents, their anxieties, this pandemic that never ceases to finish.It is more difficult to see the light when you have lived the tenth of your life in a tunnel.

He inherited some of my faults, which skips me because I know them too well.He likes to debate, but he can sometimes hear himself and does not easily let go of the song.

By tidying papers, I smiled by seeing a word from her kindergarten teacher.She stressed that he tended to challenge decisions and did not tolerate injustice.

He did not changed.He has a very sharp critical mind.He often calls into question the established order, but does not lack listening.He is wary of touting populism, ready -made formulas, "big sense" that we brandish as evidence.He prefers to explore beyond a priori and prejudices.When he sees blacks or Arabs in a TV advertisement, he does not see "Quebec friends", but a laughable government message.

Its point of view, sometimes confronting or destabilizing, is precious to me.He often encouraged me to question myself, dust off what I was holding for granted, to develop my thinking.To make me, I hope, someone more nuanced.Without me having to give up my deep principles and convictions, which he respects.Education is not a one -way way.

I see his very first photos again, the features of his face which are already taking shape, and I remember, as if it were yesterday, from the Siberian afternoon where he was born.I had never known a happier day.And even if it means in the shot, I will repeat here the commentary on Mononcle that I make to all the young parents I know.Take advantage of it.It goes too fast.