My son has issues. I can’t deal with him and my own issues. At least, I’m self-aware and am dealing with them. But having him around stresses me out. We are the only family here. My daughter lives out of state with her own set of adult child problems. There are only two of my former in-laws alive and they have nothing to do with us and it’s very easy for them not to because they don’t live near us.

I’ve lost track of how many jobs he’s had since high school. It seems like in the 26 years since he graduated, he’s rarely worked at a single job for more than a year. I swear the thought of responsibility scares him. He’s very competent as a cook, but the minute he gets moved up a step, he quits.

This last job was for assistant manager at an oil change place that also does minor maintenance, but they put him on the floor to learn what the job entails because he never did much work on cars, having worked in kitchens from high school on.

Most of this week, he told me he was home because he was sick. Then last night he texted me not to come up to yell at him in the morning because he didn’t have to go into work, unless they called him. My spider sense says “fired.” I went upstairs but he wasn’t home. So I don’t know what’s going on.

He used to be such a great kid, but the alcohol got him early. It ran deep on his father’s side. I remember the first Christmas I spent with my in-laws. We stayed overnight and the first thing I was offered in the morning was a Bloody Mary. His dad and grandparents were never without a drink in hand.

I’m certain that after my in-laws sold their house and moved out of state, the local beer distributor who serviced their house mourned the loss of delivering 30 cases of beer every month. I know, because I was asked to meet the truck once when no one else was home. 720 cans of beer a month! For a private home! I’ve had maybe 5 beers total in 60 years.

For me, alcohol is what I drink when I go out or when a group of us would get together for a weekend of camping. I don’t have it for breakfast. Even at the lowest times in my life, alcohol has not been my go-to substance. I’m more inclined to bake a batch of cookies.

People knew to bring their own drinks to my Halloween parties and to take the leftover booze home. Right now, I have a very small stash of alcohol that my son doesn’t know about in my bedroom armoire. I have rum because I used to make rum balls for Christmas to mail to a family member. She died a couple of years ago. There’s probably only enough rum left for one last batch of rum balls or to be poured over a fruitcake.

The vodka bottles contains vanilla beans for extract. There’s enough tequila left for a margarita party. But there won’t be one because most of the people I would invite to a party have died. They were all way younger than me, but cancer, diabetes, stroke, alcohol, and car accidents took their lives. It’s weird. I’ve outlived about half of my high school classmates, and at least a third of the various people from my college days. I’ve even outlived my college.