Missing Steve comes in many forms. For example, last week, G hit me with the fact that he needed a new athletic supporter. Granted, he didn’t use those words. No, he used several euphemisms because apparently 14-year-old boys do not like discussing “cookie jars” with their moms. I really wish that this had happened at a point where I could have just given him $20 and dropped him off outside the sporting goods store and said, “I’ll be waiting in the parking lot when you’re done,” but no, he mentioned this as he got out of the car to go to school on the morning of his first baseball scrimmage.

This is not the first time we had to buy one of these, but this was always in Steve’s realm. The rest of my conversation with G took place over text and involved mostly yes and no responses as in “yes I need it today” and “no my old one doesn’t fit.” After that, I suspect it was one of the few times that he strictly followed the school’s no cellphone policy for the rest of the day.

Polling my panel of experts (aka all the people who told me I could call them any time) got me everything from “just grab one at Walmart” to “it’s not like buying a bra” to “that can be as tricky as buying a bra.”

Upon going to Walmart, they literally had only one on the shelf, so that’s what G was stuck with for the day. It was definitely not a good fit for him, and somehow, he had no problem talking about that after the fact. So I did what any good clueless mom would do and bought about eight different styles and sizes on Amazon and handed the box over and said, “good luck.”

I could have cared a little more and tried to educate myself, but I am hoping that this one lasts him at least two more years until he is old enough to drive himself to wherever to get whatever replacement he needs and this is a discussion I never need to have again. Steve wasn’t necessarily great at shopping, but at least he would have known questions to ask, and he had significantly more shopping options than Walmart when he was on his way home from work.

The day after this debacle, G hit me with another one. He was heading out on a Scout camping trip for the weekend. I had already offered to go along and sleep over with him like Steve would have, if needed, and was shot down before I even finished the sentence. However, he did want to take the canoe along. Why take a kayak that will fit in the back of my SUV when you can take a canoe that your mom has never loaded on the car or driven around? Regardless, I knew Steve would have taken the canoe, so I was determined to as well.

It’s a good thing to have friends who can give you a crash course on how to strap a canoe to your roof rack and teach your how to use ratchet straps. It may not sound like much, but I was quite triumphant when I managed to get the canoe over to Locust Lake and unloaded. G couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. He was set for a weekend of camping, fishing and a little turkey hunting. I left him at camp feeling pretty good that I’d managed to check almost all of the boxes that Steve would have for a campout weekend, and was still getting to sleep in my own bed.

So, it was obviously time for the universe to knock me down a few pegs. Saturday night, I pulled into the driveway and my tire pressure alarm went off. The second I opened the car door, I could hear the leak. There was a quarter-sized hole in my tire, way too big for a quick patch. Trying to remain calm, I told myself that I was perfectly capable of changing a tire myself. Although Steve had pretty much taken over everything related to car care over the last 19 years, until I was 29 I had managed pretty well for myself, and it was time to brush off some of those skills.

It was all going really well until the lug wrench didn’t fit on the nuts. Well, it fit on some of them, but not all of them. I’m not sure how we’ve had the car for four years and never run into this problem before, but sure enough, the lug wrench only fit on about a third of the lug nuts. The rest were some odd, nonstandard size that none of the tools in my basement or my brother’s tool box could get off.

I know Steve had changed the tires before, and I could vaguely remember him saying something about needing new lugs, but I obviously never followed up on it, and since it hadn’t come up again, put it out of my mind.

Once again, it meant phoning a friend to get the job done, at least enough to get the car to the garage and let the professionals take care of it and ordering a standard set of lug nuts for the entire vehicle. It also meant that I had to worry about getting the canoe home on another vehicle. In the end, G and I figured it out and got it done, and he mentioned in passing that he’d had a great weekend, so it was all worth it.

It’s not just about missing Steve taking care of all these things, it’s missing the exasperated conversation we would have had about G “forgetting” to tell us about what he needed until the last second.

It’s the memory of driving to Maine last summer in the remnants of a hurricane, with the canoe on the roof, towing the fishing boat, that we would have talked about as I helped him get the car ready for a weekend of camping.

It’s the 10 text messages I would have gotten over the course of the weekend telling me what they were up to, sending me pictures, and other commentary. Instead, I got one solitary “good night” text from the reticent G, who I am sure was missing Dad in his own way.

I know Steve would have done things better, more efficiently, and probably with a little more cursing, although I put in a pretty good effort on that front myself. Instead, there was frustration, bitterness, loneliness and a lot of silence.

We got stuff done, no doubt the hard way, but G and I managed to make a few new memories that weren’t all bad, and the next flat tire will be much easier to change. I don’t necessarily want to call that progress, but I guess it is moving forward.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.