Ahead of my trip today, our son visited, we got some bad news, and I was reminded about what's most important in life.
Yeah, it's been quite the weekend.
A bit of background. Maybe more than a bit.
Our son graduated from college a few years ago, and it's been interesting watching him transition into a real adult. (I refuse to use the term adulting. You have a draw a line somewhere.) I was amused last year when he complained, as a resident of upstate New York but also a lifelong fan of the New England Patriots, that his taxes would be used to help pay for a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills, a local rival whom he still hates. But this year, he started taking the bigger steps of getting his New York driver's license and car registration, and his own car insurance.
This should make me happy, as it saves us about $100 a month on insurance, for starters. But these changes also serve as yet another mortality reminder, or as I often put it, another nail in my coffin. So its bittersweet. I'm delighted to see him grow up, and I'm proud of the man he's become. But also vaguely wistful for a past that will never return.
I wish that was what this article was about. But it's not. Not entirely.
Mark being forced to help pay for his least favorite NFL team's new stadium was just a preview of the negative experiences awaiting him as an adult. (This must be generational. I used to wonder why $6000 of the $8000 in property taxes we paid each year on our old house was used to help pay for a school system that I no longer had children enrolled in.) And what he found when he first tried to register his car in New York months ago was that it wasn't going to go as smoothly as he'd hoped. He got a New York license easily enough. And the car insurance, with my wife's help. But the registration? Not so much.
We were in Mexico when this started. The car is registered in my name, of course. The title was in our condo in Pennsylvania, and we wouldn't be home until early May, over two months later at the time. No problem: My oldest sister lives nearby, and she has keys to the place. So she went over one day and Stephanie talked her through the process of finding the car title in whatever file cabinet it was in. Then she mailed it to Mark in upstate New York. Mark and Kelly, our daughter, visited us in Mexico City in early March, and he brought the title with him. So I signed it and filled out the small form on the back, transferring ownership to him. After the week was over, the kids flew home, Mark with the signed title.
But when Mark took some time off from work to register the car, he was told that the title needed to be notarized. And that would need to happen in Pennsylvania. For all the miles that title flew, to New York and then back and forth to Mexico, he would have to wait another two months ... and then drive it back to Pennsylvania, where this all started. And so that's what he did: Late last week, Mark and one of his roommates drove...