God, as we all know, has a sense of humor.  I know this personally because my son — my first-born, flesh of my flesh, child of my heart — who was planning to go to college 3000 miles away from home and family, announced in July that he had decided to take a gap year.

I sobbed in December when he was accepted, but by July I was sad but wise.  I was actually kind of looking forward to it.  My son is of course a wonderful young man, but he’d started to act as if he already lived in a dorm room — ignoring the trash that needed to be taken out, the gas gauge in the car, and his curfew.  I was willing to let him slide most of the time, because he was leaving in just a matter of months  . . . of a month . . . a few weeks . . . .

But he announced sometime around the third week in July that he would not be able to go confidently out to Colorado and study for a bachelor’s degree until he had given “this culinary thing” a real try.  Never mind the fact that the school’s deadline for a gap year was two months before, or that we had plane and hotel reservations.

To be fair, he has been interested in cooking and restaurants and food for several years.  He’s tried out dozens of new recipes in our kitchen, is working on a cookbook with a friend, and interned at a catering company a couple of summers ago.  He spends a great deal of time watching the Food Network, and looking at YouTube videos of young men with many tattoos making things like chocolate pudding from avocados.

And who could have a problem with a gap year for a kid that’s 18?  What better time to take a gap year? It’s not as if he has a mortgage or a family or an encumbrance of any kind for that matter .  A gap year right after high school is a great idea.  (I’m going to gloss over the fact that his girlfriend, a lovely young woman, is also taking a gap year because he has insisted vehemently that that is SO IRRELEVANT to his decision.)

No, like so many things in life, it turns out that I’m not opposed to a gap year.  In theory. For other people’s children.  There was period where I felt like a cartoon character who’s been running running running and then slams head first into something large and hard — a wall, maybe, or a lamppost — and the little cloud above her head says, “BOIINGGGG.”

I still feel as if my brain’s still rattling around in my skull, although I’m getting used to having him here this year.  He’s doing a six-month culinary certificate program at a community college in Jersey City, a place to which there is no form of direct public transportation from our home.  He gets up at 4am to take the first train out at 4.50am so that he can be in class at 6.30am.  He goes to school with single moms, people working second jobs, and veterans on the GI bill.  His instructors often yell at him.  It’s a far cry from our suburban high school, and he loves it.

Not enough to give up on that campus in Colorado Springs, though.  He said yesterday that he’d decided not to take the second half of the program this year — that maybe he’d do it next year, “in the summer, when I get back from school.”

I think often these days about God’s sense of humor.  I think,  “Hi God, it’s me.” And God says, “‘Me’ who?”

I say, “Me, Mary Beth. You know.”

“Well,” God says, “I forget. Haven’t seen you in a while.”  Our family is what I like to refer to as “winter Catholics,” which means that we don’t get to church very regularly during the summer.  Which, surely, God knows.

(I don’t know why God sounds to me like a Jewish mother — or in my case, an equally guilt-producing Catholic mother. But He does. And don’t push me on the “He” front, either. That’s just how God sounds to me. Male. I’m a feminist, but there’s only so much tradition one can buck.)

I say, “Can I talk to you about my son?”

And God says, “Now that’s good one!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!”