Love Song (To Nate, on his fifteenth birthday)

First off, Nate-- let me say that the Lego Grand Emporium building set, with its 2,200 little Lego pieces and little Lego people and its great big Lego price has been ordered and -- so the the online store assures me -- is on it's little Lego way. Please note that, this year, I am totally on top of it: it's still weeks before your birthday.

This essay is something completely different. Call it my love song to you, my beloved boy, a pre-birthday present and my Valentine's day gift to you, all rolled into one.

I know, I know-- stop rolling your eyes. It's a mom thing. After fifteen years - fifteen! - you shouldn't be surprised. My guess is, you're already halfway expecting it, and please (consider it your gift back to me) let me persist in the belief that deep down (maybe really, really deep down) (I'm a sappy mom, not a complete fool) you are secretly pleased that I am writing you this love song. Or at least, will be, in some distant future when weird mom things like this seem much less weird, and much more, well, loving.

Fifteen years ago, I was cranky and bloated and out-of-sorts-uncomfortable. I couldn't sleep. Not enough, anyway. One thought kept twisting through the hazy fog, of my pregnancy-cursed forgetfulness: "I don't know about this whole motherhood thing, but I do know that I don't want to be pregnant anymore."

Not much has changed in the last decade and a half. I'm still cranky and bloated and out-of-sorts-uncomfortable. I still can't sleep much; I fall asleep ok; it's the staying asleep that proves to be problematic. I still don't want to be pregnant. I still have absolutely no clue about the Motherhood thing. At all.

Frankly, I don't care much about the maternal instinct that I swear I still don't have. I much prefer looking at babies to actually, you know, having them. Or holding them. Or playing with them. Certainly not changing them. Toddlers? They're cute, mostly, but they're also generally covered in fluids I'm not particularly fond of. They also get caught in that endless loop of repetition - "Again, mommy!" times infinity, until you just want to pound spikes through your forehead. It may bring comfort to a toddler; it is an endless, trackless void of madness for me.

The elementary years are somewhat better. If personality development and such are not quite on the right track, at least we're in the car in the parking lot looking at the right track (sometimes only looking at a track, which, let's face it, will do in a pinch for those desperate enough, and there were more times than I care to count that a track was close enough and better than no track at all).

I tried. I tried really, really hard. You asked questions. Sometimes incessantly. Your voracious curiosity demanded to know why, or what or when. Problem was, when I told you, your immediate response to my answers was always "No. That's not it. That's wrong." For a while, when you were very young, I could get away with "Because that's the way God made it," which was a close cousin to "oh dear--the gumball/sticker/fake tattoo/cheap plastic toy machine at the grocery store is broken..." but you are a smart child and those answers didn't hold for long.

I despaired that you would never make the leap from linear thought to abstract reasoning. Metaphors? Ha! Don't get me started. You lived in a world of straight lines and unbending rules (never mind the monsters under the bed that were apparently (mostly) vanquished by the glow of a 25 watt bulb that seeped from the six inch crack left by your open closet door). You seemed to demand that I live in the straight and narrow with you.

There were times, my darling child, that I wanted to run away. Or hide. Or beg "Five minutes, baby. Please-- just give me five minutes." But that proved to be nearly impossible for you to give. What saved me  were these occasional flashes of incandescent brilliance-- leaps of fancy and abstraction that dazzled me and startled me and fairly took my breath away. You so clearly "got it."

At six, you declared that when you grew up, you would "build houses for all the poor people, and make sure that they had enough to eat." At ten, you burst into tears - not because Representative Gabby Giffords had been shot, and not that there were a handful of others (including a young child) caught in the wake of those senseless bullets -- but because there was no outcry for the young boy who'd been murdered (also by senseless bullets) on the south side of Chicago only a few days before. You cried out: Where was the justice, the attention, the president's speech for the poor black child lost to urban warfare? Why just the richer, white people in Arizona? At twelve, you chose your the Torah portion for your Bar Mitzvah to be Sh'lach Lecha; the one about the giants and the spies, yes-- but you chose to talk about the commandments we were given on how to treat "the stranger"-- the outside-of, the kept-apart one, the Other.

Oh, may darling boy-- you so clearly get it. You have no shyness in telling me you don't believe in God. But you believe in kindness; I'm good with that. You so clearly have a sense of righteousness and compassion that I swear will heal the world. I have no doubt that you will build the houses, fight for justice, demand that we treat one another kindly and with love. You are that boy, and I am so amazed at the grace and the gift I have been given in being your mom.

Don't get me wrong, beloved-- you will have your struggles. You know that already. And I won't be able to heal your hurt every time. Or even any time. You know that, too. I will not always have words of wisdom, sage advice, or answers (easy or cryptic, take your pick). There will be moments of speechlessness and hurt, and a heaping pile of seething anger. On your side. And mine. We are who we are, right? 

But given all our faults and humanity, I can promise you forgiveness. I can promise that nothing you do or say will ever make me love you less. I promise open arms and comfort. And love. Ever and always-- love. What you taught me-- that there is love, unconditional, infinite and filled with grace. 

A decade and a half later, I still have no clue about a maternal instinct. Frankly, at this point, I could not care less about maternal instinct. I'm your mom. For good, forever, learned or innate, messed up and glorious and neurotically anxious and trying to keep up -- I am your mom. It's the most important truth of the universe. I can't imagine a life, a world, a minute, a day where I am not your mother.

And for that, I am forever grateful, and will be forever blessed.

Small Stuff

Last spring, right around the time school let out (May-ish, when the air is warm but not yet humid, and everyone wants to have class outside (even the adults, locked in their offices of glass and steel and climate-controlled windows that won't open), and the kids are all just itching for the final bell to ring and free them from the prison that is school) last spring,  I got The Call.  It was not a Divine Call to join some religious order or nunnery. Wrong religion, wrong calling.  It was the dreaded Call From School.  My son, far from being sick, far from being awarded some educational accolade or middle school equivalent of a Nobel Peace prize, was being awarded a detention.  Dammit.

My son-- bright and funny and smart and kind and thirteen and, yeah; I'll say it again: smart-- my son lied.  He lied about where he was, when he was, and just what the hell he was doing.  He was supposed to be at an after school club.  He was supposed to be finishing up some homework.  What he got was caught.  What he got was in trouble.  What he got was a two day (two days!) detention in the Vice Principal's office. 

My rational brain keeps sending me soothing messages: "He's thirteen.  He'll get it together.  You weren't an angel at his age.  Look where you are now."

My lizard brain has a salamander basking on a rock in the hot sun, flicking its long, poison-tipped tongue, and whispering seductively in my ear: "Duuuuuuuuuuuct tape. Ssssstrap him to the chairrr and let him sssssssufferrrrrr,  Then ssssssell him" Visions of torture and retribution dance through my head.

Oh great. Turns out, I'm a pacifist with violent tendencies.

My first impulse was to reach for my well-used, dog-eared copy of The Rule Book: A Parent’s Handy Dandy Guide to Raising Perfect Children.

Oh wait— there is no such book. Or, if there is, I must have been out grabbing a cup of coffee when They (the omnipotent, omnipresent They)— I was out when all the other parents were getting their copies. As an added bonus, I had apparently also been absent the day They handed out The Single Parent’s Guide as part of the divorce settlement. I was on my own, flying solo. 

Hooray.

Ah— the joys of parenting.  Single parenting at that.  It hits me oddly, that giddy, terrifying, swoopy, bottom-dropping-out feeling, all sideways and slanted and so totally unexpected. They say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you makes you stronger. Right. At this point, I am Atlas, and all I want to do is shrug.  I know, I know: it’s really no big deal. He’s thirteen. It’s a detention, not hard time on a chain gang. But, well— it’s a detention. It’s one more thing I have to deal with, in a long line of stuff I have to deal with.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my son: fiercely, unconditionally, wholly. There is nothing I would not do for him. But these moments, where I am so certain that I’ve committed some grievous parenting error, provided him with more than sufficient fodder for future therapy sessions, in which I will have the starring role as Ghengis Khan, Machiavelli and Medea all rolled into one. these are the moments I would gladly trade. These are the times I want to call for a timeout. The Universe is less than obliging.

This isn’t big stuff. Hell, the big stuff is easy. I am the Fixer of Broken Things. So I fix. I act. I do. You shoulder the big stuff because you can’t do anything less. I never realized that it would be the small moments that would trip me up, leave me clueless and frustrated and slightly panicked. You find out the hard way, when it’s 10:00 and you realize you’ve run out of cream for tomorrow’s coffee. It’s that chasm of infinite guilt as you send your kid off to school with that nasty, nagging cough because you have a meeting that you just can’t miss, not today. It’s not signing up for Little League because you work and who the hell calls a practice at 4:00 in the afternoon for God’s sake, and hearing your son say, as you drive past the ball field, in that voice that’s way too mature: “It’s ok, Mommy. Maybe next year.” It’s going it alone, again, ever and always, as you try to navigate through all the lonely, silent days. It’s the easy stuff, the quiet stuff that makes it hard to breathe sometimes.

This is the part, neither big nor easy, but certainly breathless and definitely painful, where I admit that I have no idea what I'm doing. And I'm afraid that I will screw up my kid. Have screwed up my kid. That I'm doing my best, dammit, and am terrified that my best just isn't good enough. This is the part where I say my ego was bruised, and what the hell kind of mother could I possibly be to letsego matter when it comes to her kid? This is the part where I admit, through gritted teeth, that I am more annoyed with the fact that I believed him, rather than the fact that he lied at all.

This is the whispery, secret and ashamed part, where I admit that I had a part to play in this. Not the lying part, but the part that led up to that, kinda-sorta. The part that I knew he was struggling, treading water and not doing a good job at that, and I? I turned a blind eye to it. Ok, if not blind, then at least half-closed and squinty. Because there was the job thing and the bills-to-pay thing and the this-that-and-the-other-thing thing that was really important and had to be done right now and I promise I'll notice you later. And help you later. And teach you. Later.

Later. Ha! He's thirteen: there is no "later."

And I knew that. I knew that he needed me now, and prayed that later would be good enough. Hooray me.

And then I remember: it is a detention, nothing more. Time served, punishment meted. Small stuff.

For all that it can be sad and lonely and silent, it is small stuff.  Painful and prickly and breathtaking-- but small stuff nonetheless.  He is resilient, that boy of mine.  He is bright and funny and smart and kind and thirteen and, yeah; I'll say it again: smart.  He pushes at the boundaries to find his limits (and mine).  He's learning to taste the choices he makes, and savor how they feel against his skin.  He is becoming his own, which is, really, the whole point. 

 

This is small stuff, and these are small moments.  He lied. It's a detention. We survived the storm (even as I brace for the next one).  But for all that, I get friends who remind me to breathe.  They drown out the seductive song of that damned basking salamander and tell me that the small stuff is just that: small.  They tell me that even the big stuff is small. 

 

In the midst this, I have found a few small truths:  Parenting is tough (single or paired or in whatever village-shaped iteration one has cadged together to get through these moments).  I screw up, make mistakes, doubt and wonder and panic and dither.  I love my son.  Fiercely, unconditionally, wholly. I love him even when he lies, even when he gets caught.  And for all that I screw up and doubt and dither, my son knows that.  Above all else, he knows that he is loved. 

 

The trick, I think, is to breathe long enough to gather in all these moments– not just the minor panic and small fears, but the triumphs and joys, and-- most of all-- love, so that we can find that what we get, what we really get when all is said and done, is a life.  Far from perfect, far from solitary.  We get a life filled with everything and then some.  And then I remember that it is all small stuff and I am filled.