Celebrating Closeness

It was a guy weekend. Mom went out of town to meet her new nephew, and her boys stayed home. We made a point of going outside, a couple of times. We managed to eat something besides frozen pizza and ice cream. It should also be noted here that the frozen pizza we did eat was warmed up in a real oven before it was inhaled.
On Saturday night we had steak. Dad grilled and son made a salad. As another concession to propriety, we chose to eat off plates. The bites may have been larger than we could have gotten away with mom watching, but we did use forks and knives and there was some chewing involved. It was the kind of low-impact/high reward meal that exists primarily as an experiment: red meat and roughage. What will win out?
Of course, we didn't bother to sit at the dinner table, preferring instead to hunch over the coffee table in front of the television. It is a well known fact that nothing aids digestion of guy food like action movies. On steak night, we chose "Hot Fuzz," the second of the Cornetto trilogy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. We did take a pause for clearing the dishes, and my son was kind enough to bring us each a napkin. Then it was time for a little Ben and Jerry's. If you're keeping score at home, neither one of us exceeded our half-pint limit.
Then came the part of the evening when we both leaned back on the couch to savor our good fortune and full bellies. This was the bonding moment. With our feet now resting where our plates once were, I noticed that my sixteen year old son had leaned over and his head was now resting lightly on my shoulder. We were close. We are close.
We missed mom, but it felt good to have that opportunity. We were glad to have her back, and we might even invite her to have meat in front of the TV with us one day. We're close.