They say life is a good thing.
I lost Nathan to life. The bringing in, this part I get, the ushering of life from your body to the world, the shake hands with the wet baby on your stomach and stay awhile, because you can’t walk, and you can’t leave, in fact you were actually a part of my body. That’s a sticky situation in the heart dept.
But that wet baby now just had an envelope in the kitchen full of his friends’ pooled money and they put that money into an apartment manager’s hand so now they have an apartment 4 minutes from their school. It’s also 4 minutes from the beach, the other direction. That’s going to be a hard choice, every day. I say.
Like he’s going to get out of bed with his girlfriend anyway.
But 18, wait. Is this it then? So you take a LONG TIME I’m talking years.
Then it comes down to the envelope, please. I feel grown up now, he says.
I want a pamphlet that goes out to all new mothers, whom I still feel like, 18 yrs later. It should say:
This is only a phase. This little person is going to rip your heart out through your eyes. You are going to feel every pain he ever has. You are going to also make cookies. You get to see those bare feet grow through every pair of shoes. Toes you made. There will be blood. There will be swimming.
There will be other people’s kids mostly that you won’t like. Parents, even worse. There will be a person whose footfalls down the hall you know. You will grow right up along his spine with him.
When he goes, you go. There will be secrets. And girls. And drugs. There will be lying, and fireworks. There will be a new refrigerator.
Then there will be the envelope and his happiness at finding
the gym and the common room at the apartment. There’s a pool table there. He’s
going to live with three friends and a girlfriend. He already lived in the dorm
for a year. That already happened. Even though we saw him on the weekends, it
felt like he was just at a weird camp and not growing up like this. This is
life, taking him. That envelope, he’s paying the devil, and his eyes glow it
looks like fun in hell. I mean in grown up. And it will be fun, I’m sure. The
only problem is
tiny weird wave
I'm still here, though. Over here not over it.
I guess if you love someone you are never over it. At least when you have a bad breakup you can eat a lot of ice cream and all your friends will tell you he or she was a loser and you didn’t need them anyway. But when it’s your son. You already know he’s a loser except for that other part, the flip side, where he’s okay. Still.
So the pamphlet has to say just hang on, mom. Because even though you know it is coming, it is still a shock. Just like that wet baby squeezing out was. Even though you felt him in there every time you ate a tuna sandwich in Florida at 9 months pregnant, and he bounced around and you floated in the water in the humid alligator lake there, belly on top, black dog swimming around you while he was swimming around IN you. It was still a shock when he actually came out and was there, commanding my presence, just like no big deal, like he had always been there, waiting.
I guess now it’s my turn, waiting. To see what happens next.
I think the biggest shock is that I actually love someone. Like I can’t believe I can say that without whispering it. There is a person on this earth that I actually love, somehow, forever. Because I guess it’s ego, but I made him, and he’s mine. My best work. All 3 of the kids. I actually used the recipe stitched into my pants from my own mom. And embellished on by things I read in romantic books like Jane Eyre and Virginia Woolf. The way to love someone is all out there written in grilled cheese sandwiches and rainy days on the couch making a box into a ship. I just personally never did the love thing for real except this little fucker got in there and I loved him on purpose and now here I am with my pockets hanging out and looking like a shredded hobo while he hops the freight out holding his bag and he’s waving from the train car. All sparkling, you know why? Cause that’s me he’s sparkling. All the beauty? I gave it all.
Damn if I could only figure out how to do that everywhere in my life. Imagine a world.
But there would be so much crying. Loving and building shit like that is like squeezing out a wet washcloth the size of Wyoming. That shit hurts. Loving full blown is like crying constantly for 18 years.
laughing.
I’m glad I’m a hobo. I’m glad I learned to do something scary like have and raise a whole person(s). I’m glad I was lucky enough to have soultrain Barry help. I also think this exact thing happened last year when he first went off to college. So I guess I get to be amazed to learn this is how I feel each year. Until it sticks.
Moms unfold and unfold and unfold and inside there is still more.
