Pressing Matters

September 28, 2012September 28, 2012 / roughwighting / 20 Comments

I call my son Sean on his cell phone, at work, 11 a.m.

I don’t usually call my boy during the day. After all, he works, in the big city, in a big high-financing job that I understand absolutely nothing about. I hear his explanations of investing, solar, banks, corporations, tax credit, energy, but to be perfectly honest, at banks and tax credits my brain gets fuzzy and my eyes roll back so I just nod my head and say “Ohhhh!” as if I’ve understood every fast-speaking, super-intelligent thing he’s said.

But today, I just want to hear his voice. I miss that, now that he’s not the little boy who absolutely and completely loves his mother, buying her flowers when he’s driven her close to distraction, and offering a huge smile and hug every night until he leaves for college.

My son is MINE until he meets his match, his sunshine, the chink to his armor, the woman he’s dreamed of before he ever met her — his wife.

Now he’s hers, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, the way I want it to be.

Until I call him at 11 in the morning and he doesn’t answer his phone, and I think, “Sean doesn’t have time for me right now.”

Before pressing matters.

The truth is, he doesn’t, not now that he’s married and the father of three little boys and commuting to the big city and worrying about bills and pre-schools and property taxes and how to celebrate each anniversary (at their third, he discovered the traditional gift is leather – and by god, he bought his love … a leather bracelet). By the type of man he is, the husband he is, the father he is, I know I did good. But I just want to hear Sean’s voice and let him be my little boy just for a minute.Please!

But five minutes after I call, I receive a text. Let me explain that I am at work myself, so I’m happy to see a text, since I really can’t take the time from work to talk then anyway – ah, the vagaries of motherhood.

But the text takes my breath away.

Here it is.

Ready?

“In meetings all day. Can we talk tomorrow? Anything pressing?”

PRESSING?

“Like an iron,” I text back angrily without thinking.

When, oh when, did I get to the point of being a person in my son’s life whom he has to find a schedule for, whom he can only talk to if it’s “pressing,” whom he…

“You’ve been married too long to dad,” he texts back.

I smile. My man is known in our family circle as a frequent (though not necessarily accomplished) person-who-puns.

I pause. Sean did text back soon after my missed call. He did make sure I was okay, then asked if we could talk later.

Sean with one of his pressing matters.

I text him a funny face :+) and let go of my loss.He’s still my son, but he’s not my little boy. He still loves me, but he’s expanded his heart to love a wife, three children. He’s made a life, a family, and where do I fit in?

I’m his mom.

Forever.

Illustration thanks to Pam Rubert, http://pamrubert.com/about/press1/

The Nest, Emptied

August 31, 2012 / roughwighting / 30 Comments

(In honor of my brother and sister-in-law, my colleagues, my friends, whose last child has just ‘flown the coop’)

For so long, I had listened to the clang of the alarm clocks waking up the children, the limped thump of our son walking stiffly to the bathroom, the feminine growls of his older sister as she demanded her time in that same room.

Suddenly, these morning sounds ceased. Daughter was in Florence for her junior year abroad. Son began his first year at a university thousands of miles away, and I was, once again, childless.

The quiet was surprising.

I had forgotten the time, over 20 years ago, when the only sound was of my breathing, my own steps to the refrigerator or radio, my sighs as I thought out loud, the tick tock of the clock. Once the first child arrived, silence was unimagined.

I never missed the lack of noise, though. Beauty was the baby’s laugh, the tottler’s scream of delight, the sick child’s feverish moan, the teenager’s cry of a friend’s abandonment, the whelp of joy when a college invitation arrived.

I loved the excited conversations after school over chocolate chip cookies, and the sleepy sentences exchanged early in the morning in the car on the way to school. Dinnertime was never a quiet affair. As the man-of-the-house expanded on his notion of “charm school” and the merits of not talking with food in your mouth and keeping your elbows off the table, the four of us discussed, loudly at times, the politics of the week, the latest football scores, and why 10^th graders weren’t allowed to go to unsupervised parties.

As the two grew, the conversation matured on the topics of sex, the unpredictability of the weather, and Republicans vs. Democrats. The responses were never boring; the walls were never quiet.

sister and brother, coop flown

But then, a cloud of silence descended upon our household. I could hear myself think again. I heard the wind against the walls, and the old refrigerator’s hum of discontent. The leaves of the eucalyptus tree blew loudly outside my bedroom doors, and the foghorns moaned early every morning. The doves cooed outside the bathroom window, and my footsteps followed my every move.

Silence is not golden, nor is it really possible. The absolute quiet was filled with other sounds, but none were as gratifying as the noise that accompanied the happy home when it was filled with a growing family.

So….

we got a puppy.

Family Reunion

July 6, 2012 / roughwighting / 10 Comments

I race to the baggage area for the usual “hurry up and wait” routine, but the carousel begins its screeching circular belch of bags almost immediately. My cell phone rings when the ‘beep beep beep’ begins and 150 newly arrived passengers swoop in to retrieve their bags before anyone else.

“Hello,” I chirp cheerily on my cell while scanning each bag on the merry-go-round.

“We’re here to pick you up,” daughter welcomes me, in a stressed tone with a capital S. “Come out the doors as quickly as you can. Security guys are watching.”

“Bag’s just about here!” I trill. “Can’t wait to see you!”

But she’s already shut off her phone.

As the suitcases circle I wonder about daughter’s use of the word “we.” Our plan had been for her to leave the two kids at home with her husband so we could have some blessed “just mom/daughter” time before the madhouse of a family reunion. We rarely have time to finish a sentence these days – a one-hour car ride with just the two of us sounded like heaven.

Just as my large once-forest green, now cooked-artichoke brown bag sails by, my cell rings.

I pick up the duffel with a yank as I answer.

“Where are you?” sweet daughter shouts.

“Got it!” I reply.

“We’re right at the doors!!”

I begin to run to the right side of the baggage area but stop in confusion. A similar set of doors are also located on the left side. And they each display a sign that says, “Pick-Up: Taxi, Bus, Car.”

Which doors should I go through?

I stand in the middle of the large noisy room, vacillating. My cell rings again. Damn.

I shove my hand into my cavernous purse, the one that reminds me of Hermione’s magic bag in Harry Potter, where she pulls out books, clothes, a tent, and a shovel. My fingers search for my phone with no luck. My ring tone blares to the Beatles tune of ‘HELP!,” but I can’t find it anywhere.

So, I bend down in the middle of 100 bustling people and pull out my wallet, make-up bag, roll of Mentos, pack of red licorice sticks, favorite pink pen, hairbrush, and then finally, my phone.

A voice mail awaits me:

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

I hit Reply back and scream, “Which set of doors?”

Daughter shouts back, “What? THE doors. We’re by the red car. Quick!”

I throw everything back in my witching bag and take a wild guess, going for the left-hand side doors.

But then I remember, she just bought a new car, and I’ve never seen it. I peer up and down and don’t see anyone I recognize. I open the g.d. phone again and, while standing in the middle of the airport car lane yell, “Can you see me? I can’t see you!”

“We can’t see you! A black van just passed us, did you see it?”

At this point I’m hoping to get run over by it. But then I view a brown hybrid five cars ahead, underneath the overhang. Heart pounding I run toward it with my 50-pound duffel bag, my book bag, my witch purse, and my cell phone at my ear.

Eureka ! My daughter is sitting at the driver’s side! I open the passenger door and almost sit on my mother, who along with 3-year-old granddaughter and 2-year-old grandson is grimacing at me as if I’ve been a very bad girl.

“Find a seat in the back,” they all yell.

Ahhh, family reunions!

SIX WORDS, THAT’S ALL I NEED!

June 29, 2012 / roughwighting / 77 Comments

Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to tell a story in only six words. His response: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

I’m sniffling already, and it’s only a six-word story!

Since then, similar challenges have been thrown out in magazines, books, and blogs: can you tell your life story in six words?

Well, can you?

Here’s a few I’ve come up with:

WHO IS THAT IN MY MIRROR?

Well, that’s not my life story, but sometimes it’s what I scream to myself in the morning.

LIFE’S HARD, LOVE SOFTENS IT UP

Life IS hard, I think we all agree. But can you imagine how much harder it would be without your loved ones? Your friends, your spouse or significant other, your children or nieces/nephews? Since I’ve been old enough to wonder about the meaning of life, about why we’re even here, I’ve figured out that it’s all about the love.

I’M STILL 30, KIDS CATCHING UP

That’s how I feel – like I’m 30 years old and having a heck of a time each day making it through my job, my joys, my fears, my … but wait. My son tells me he’s 30? How’d he catch up to me like that?

I love the title of a book that published six-word memoirs by “Writers Famous and Obscure” (2008) called Not Quite What I Was Planning.

I imagine that’s how most of us feel by the time we’ve reached a certain age. Are you nodding your head? Did you plan to be where you are, who you are, years ago? Doubtful!

Oh, here’s another one I just thought of:

BORN. EDUCATED. MARRIED. FAMILY. NOW FUN!

Spoken like the empty nester that I am. Yes, Virginia, there is life after 50 (um, and even later!)

My turn now to challenge YOU. I dare you to send me (in the comment section) your six-word story or memoir.

Come on, you can do it!