Senior year and the college application process are a trying time; however, it brought A and I closer together than ever before.

Part of it was the brainstorming process, the discussions about potential essay questions. Part of it was the distillation process of his entire life, getting down to the few things that were important, both to him and to the application process.

Another part was the traveling we did together to visit schools, and the experience of new places. All of that, while exhausting, was well worth it in the long run.

Now I get to do it all over again, with a child that has always been just a little bit of a mystery to me.

I think part of my frustration with his reluctance to start the process is that I am eager to get to know him better. That sounds silly, coming from someone who has literally known him from the second he was born, but G has always been more of his father’s child, chasing the same interests and having the same type of goals.

He’s even planning on majoring in an area like what Steve did and where Steve’s career originally took him.

But the one thing that I do know about G is that he zags when I expect him to zig. This is a mildly terrifying prospect as we head into the most zig-worthy process out there, but I keep telling myself that zagging is one of his strengths, and if he uses it the right way, bodes well for his future.

I’ve been reading some of his early stabs at writing, and much to my surprise, I’ve discovered that, while he writes in a way that is completely foreign to me, and uses stylings that I would never in a million years think to put in an intellectual work, he has a knack for communicating, and underneath it all, might be a better writer than the rest of us. (A has even begrudgingly admitted this.) I am standing by the old “it’s not better, it’s different” form of judgment, just to keep the peace.

More than once, I’ve asked G where or how he came up with such an idea. Sometimes I suspect he uses ChatGPT or some other form of AI to “randomly generate ideas,” which he finds laughable. “It just comes to me when I’m sitting there,” he’ll say.

That’s when I realized that G does something that not a lot of kids his age do much of anymore. He just sits there. He has spent so much time fishing this summer. Sometimes with friends, but just as much, if not more time, solo.

While it’s mildly concerning to me to see his little dot all by its lonesome drifting in the middle of a lake, it usually moves just enough to let me know that he’s functioning. But fishing gives him a lot of time to just think things. And think he does. The other night, I watched him bang out a two-page essay from nothing on the paper in a mere 45 minutes. He’d “thought it out” all day.

Soon it will be hunting season. While the rapid pace of following the dogs through the pheasant fields doesn’t leave much time for thought, he’ll spend many hours up in his tree stand with more time on his hands for thinking. While I’m sure Steve had his philosophical years, by the time we were together, he’d moved on to much more practical thoughts, like how to paint the living room faster, or how we could manage a vacation at both the mountain lake for him and the ocean for me.

I’ve started to get some insight to these deep thoughts as we’ve made our way across college campuses.

His observational nature, the one that’s searching for signs of approaching deer, picks out interesting characters or other little quirks of our surroundings. The ride home is full of speculation as to what these folks’ stories were. Chances are I didn’t notice a quarter of the things that he did, much less form an elaborate backstory about any of it, but he has.

I joked with him that for all the fishing he’s done, he hasn’t brought a lot home, although I’ve seen plenty of pictures before he’s released his catch back to repeat the cycle.

His hunting seasons have had slightly more success, especially when he has Duncan by his side. (Duncan is not at all sidetracked by the philosophy of it all and really just wants to bring home dead birds.)

Once again, I find myself admitting that Steve was right all along: hunting, and by extension fishing, has a lot more merit than just putting food on the table. Allowing G to be left alone with his thoughts has brought more interesting things to the table than just a meal.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News