Sans Son Baby Bird
“The thermodynamics of bovines play an integral part in their overall health.”
That was the line that some farmer repeated to me in a dream before I woke up to take my only son to college. The rest of the day was a similar, indiscernible fiasco. I won’t go into the details because I’m simply too exhausted. Maybe later. I’ll sum it up with the following action words and phrases: disagreeing, arguing, attempted murder, eating, loading, sweating (profusely), negotiating, driving, unloading (sweating profusely), fighting the urge to strangle, shopping, seething, hugging, smiling, laughing, crying, remembering, resenting, overeating, driving back to an empty nest, and trying to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. As you can see, it’s just too long a story involving a large cast of characters, all eliciting a cornucopia of emotions. You can thank me later for not telling the story, although when I’m emotionally stronger, I may tell it anyway. You’ve been forewarned!
Bottom line: now Jack and I are living alone again after twenty years, even though at one point I lost control and pleaded with my son, “Don’t leave me at home with him!” This was when Jack was doing tests to see how small a gap he could leave in the back door to let my poor, incontinent Lab let himself in and out.
“You know, Dad,” said David. “If an intruder gets this far, do you really think he’s doing to say, ‘Oh that gap in the door is just a tad too little for me. I’ll turn back now’?
Okay, I promised no details.
When I awake this morning, I fight back tears. It's the little things: David is not in his room. He won't be coming home from work, telling me his adventures for the day. He and his friends won't be raiding the refrigerator. I can't bug him with my impromptu, stupid stories (lucky him.)
My next-door-neighbor, Gary, calls and asks, “So how are the newlyweds?”
“I have resisted killing Jack while he sleeps and he has obviously done the same,” I answer.
We are now “sleeping” with an 11-year-old baby, our pug, Moses. He’s been sleeping with our son for all these years, and in a single-human bed, he’s fine. But he wants Jack OUT! Jack is complying, disappearing mysteriously into the night to whereabouts within the house unknown. Dogs-left-behind is something that people may not consider. I now have to set the air- conditioner even lower, now that I have a 20-pound little snuggly, breathing fire hydrant attached to his ever-changing choice for the part of my anatomy that he considers pillow-like.
Plus, after the arduous, letting-number-one-and-only-son-with-a-sense-of-humor-escape journey, we had to arise at the crack of dawn to return the Budget Rental Truck. I am still resentful (for reasons that I have not explained but that are perfectly justifiable when you take into consideration that I am married to a German who considers all emotion anathema! Ahem!) combined with the fact that I am NOT a morning person! I get over it. That’s how I have survived this long. (“Oh poor you! SHUT UP!” yells one of my many critical personalities.) Let’s move on.
Jack and I stop off at a Home Depot on our way home from the truck drop-off and discuss the intricacies of the new kitchen counter tops that we’ll get when we have 99 CENT to spare! We’ve had this fantastical conversation for twenty years. (If you notice a lot of all-cap lettering, it’s an expression of my repressed rage, which as a mother who has just watched her only baby bird fly away after she spent his childhood working and trying to get more time with him, seems appropriate at the time; so if bothers you, then UP YOURS!!)
Again, I apologize.
Anyway, we enjoy looking and dreaming about home improvements. Then Jack drops me off at home and I start working on the freelance stuff that pays nothing but is due TOMORROW! Then I hear this beeping sound and discover that Jack has decided to deal with his pain like so many men do—with large and powerful mechanical equipment. I save my Word document and walk out to see him 50 feet in the air on a cherry picker/bucket crane, holding a giant, revving chainsaw.
“If these dead limbs drop off, they’ll kill somebody or squash the cars,” he yells down at me from his skyscraping bucket perch.
“Wait a minute!” I yell back. “I’ll get my camera!” (The one I didn’t get to use on a monumental day, yesterday, because . . . take mental control, take control.)
So I get the camera and then decide that this is a good opportunity to torture myself by confronting yet another of my personal fears—the fear of heights. “Will that thing take up two people?" I ask.
Fifty feet up (which to window washers is nothing) I cling to the bars with sweaty hands and say, “Okay, you take the camera off of my neck and take a picture of our rooftop, yard, and the dogs below ," who are too stupid to look up when we call them but keep looking around at every angle (except up) when we call their names. (Yes, I write “who” for dogs rather than the recommended “that” because I consider a dog as a who not a that! Obviously, the editorial staff at one of my jobs is getting to me.)
When I finally get to the gut-wrenching maximum height of this man-mobile and try to snap a shot, the camera screen flashes “Batteries diminished!” We lower back down to the ground. I run into the house, when sister Jennifer phones. “Can I call you back?” I ask breathlessly, “Jack and I have a cherry-picker and I need to put new batteries in my camera so that we can get some tree-top views of the house.”
“Oooh-Kaaaye,” she answers, a practical person that already believes I should be committed.
I don’t know how this together again routine is all going to play out. I must confess that I'm worried.
“What are you doing?” Jack asks as I walk down the hall.
“Going to the bathroom, but actually not as I walk but heading in that direction,” I answer.
Later, “What are you doing? You aren’t saying anything. Where are you?” he asks.
Oh, MY GOD!!”
Then, a neighbor several acres down suddenly appears at my door after I've downed most of a bottle of wine (thinking, what the heck, it's justified) that I got for cheap at the UGA Walmart. She has two (approximately) ten-year-old girls with her and two little boys: one in diapers and the other just beyond, a jet-black-hair little fella named Hose'.
"I got some of your mail,"" she says, after ten years of never seeing or speaking. The two little boys squeal at seeing our dogs and run toward the pool. Both immediately strip naked and jump into our poolette. Neither appear to be able to swim, so I freak out and yell, "Girls, grab them now!"
Soon, all is calm, and these little buck-naked boys with the girls' supervision are grinning and floating on various devises with their little bottoms shining from the pool floats for all to see.
"I'm so embarrassed," says the almost unknown neighbor. "But somehow the expression on your facc tells me it's okay."
"Bring them over whenever you can," I say, remembering my little boy and all his friends since kindergarten. "You can't imagine what good timing this has been."
"
That was the line that some farmer repeated to me in a dream before I woke up to take my only son to college. The rest of the day was a similar, indiscernible fiasco. I won’t go into the details because I’m simply too exhausted. Maybe later. I’ll sum it up with the following action words and phrases: disagreeing, arguing, attempted murder, eating, loading, sweating (profusely), negotiating, driving, unloading (sweating profusely), fighting the urge to strangle, shopping, seething, hugging, smiling, laughing, crying, remembering, resenting, overeating, driving back to an empty nest, and trying to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. As you can see, it’s just too long a story involving a large cast of characters, all eliciting a cornucopia of emotions. You can thank me later for not telling the story, although when I’m emotionally stronger, I may tell it anyway. You’ve been forewarned!
Bottom line: now Jack and I are living alone again after twenty years, even though at one point I lost control and pleaded with my son, “Don’t leave me at home with him!” This was when Jack was doing tests to see how small a gap he could leave in the back door to let my poor, incontinent Lab let himself in and out.
“You know, Dad,” said David. “If an intruder gets this far, do you really think he’s doing to say, ‘Oh that gap in the door is just a tad too little for me. I’ll turn back now’?
Okay, I promised no details.
When I awake this morning, I fight back tears. It's the little things: David is not in his room. He won't be coming home from work, telling me his adventures for the day. He and his friends won't be raiding the refrigerator. I can't bug him with my impromptu, stupid stories (lucky him.)
My next-door-neighbor, Gary, calls and asks, “So how are the newlyweds?”
“I have resisted killing Jack while he sleeps and he has obviously done the same,” I answer.
We are now “sleeping” with an 11-year-old baby, our pug, Moses. He’s been sleeping with our son for all these years, and in a single-human bed, he’s fine. But he wants Jack OUT! Jack is complying, disappearing mysteriously into the night to whereabouts within the house unknown. Dogs-left-behind is something that people may not consider. I now have to set the air- conditioner even lower, now that I have a 20-pound little snuggly, breathing fire hydrant attached to his ever-changing choice for the part of my anatomy that he considers pillow-like.
Plus, after the arduous, letting-number-one-and-only-son-with-a-sense-of-humor-escape journey, we had to arise at the crack of dawn to return the Budget Rental Truck. I am still resentful (for reasons that I have not explained but that are perfectly justifiable when you take into consideration that I am married to a German who considers all emotion anathema! Ahem!) combined with the fact that I am NOT a morning person! I get over it. That’s how I have survived this long. (“Oh poor you! SHUT UP!” yells one of my many critical personalities.) Let’s move on.
Jack and I stop off at a Home Depot on our way home from the truck drop-off and discuss the intricacies of the new kitchen counter tops that we’ll get when we have 99 CENT to spare! We’ve had this fantastical conversation for twenty years. (If you notice a lot of all-cap lettering, it’s an expression of my repressed rage, which as a mother who has just watched her only baby bird fly away after she spent his childhood working and trying to get more time with him, seems appropriate at the time; so if bothers you, then UP YOURS!!)
Again, I apologize.
Anyway, we enjoy looking and dreaming about home improvements. Then Jack drops me off at home and I start working on the freelance stuff that pays nothing but is due TOMORROW! Then I hear this beeping sound and discover that Jack has decided to deal with his pain like so many men do—with large and powerful mechanical equipment. I save my Word document and walk out to see him 50 feet in the air on a cherry picker/bucket crane, holding a giant, revving chainsaw.
“If these dead limbs drop off, they’ll kill somebody or squash the cars,” he yells down at me from his skyscraping bucket perch.
“Wait a minute!” I yell back. “I’ll get my camera!” (The one I didn’t get to use on a monumental day, yesterday, because . . . take mental control, take control.)
So I get the camera and then decide that this is a good opportunity to torture myself by confronting yet another of my personal fears—the fear of heights. “Will that thing take up two people?" I ask.
Fifty feet up (which to window washers is nothing) I cling to the bars with sweaty hands and say, “Okay, you take the camera off of my neck and take a picture of our rooftop, yard, and the dogs below ," who are too stupid to look up when we call them but keep looking around at every angle (except up) when we call their names. (Yes, I write “who” for dogs rather than the recommended “that” because I consider a dog as a who not a that! Obviously, the editorial staff at one of my jobs is getting to me.)
When I finally get to the gut-wrenching maximum height of this man-mobile and try to snap a shot, the camera screen flashes “Batteries diminished!” We lower back down to the ground. I run into the house, when sister Jennifer phones. “Can I call you back?” I ask breathlessly, “Jack and I have a cherry-picker and I need to put new batteries in my camera so that we can get some tree-top views of the house.”
“Oooh-Kaaaye,” she answers, a practical person that already believes I should be committed.
I don’t know how this together again routine is all going to play out. I must confess that I'm worried.
“What are you doing?” Jack asks as I walk down the hall.
“Going to the bathroom, but actually not as I walk but heading in that direction,” I answer.
Later, “What are you doing? You aren’t saying anything. Where are you?” he asks.
Oh, MY GOD!!”
Then, a neighbor several acres down suddenly appears at my door after I've downed most of a bottle of wine (thinking, what the heck, it's justified) that I got for cheap at the UGA Walmart. She has two (approximately) ten-year-old girls with her and two little boys: one in diapers and the other just beyond, a jet-black-hair little fella named Hose'.
"I got some of your mail,"" she says, after ten years of never seeing or speaking. The two little boys squeal at seeing our dogs and run toward the pool. Both immediately strip naked and jump into our poolette. Neither appear to be able to swim, so I freak out and yell, "Girls, grab them now!"
Soon, all is calm, and these little buck-naked boys with the girls' supervision are grinning and floating on various devises with their little bottoms shining from the pool floats for all to see.
"I'm so embarrassed," says the almost unknown neighbor. "But somehow the expression on your facc tells me it's okay."
"Bring them over whenever you can," I say, remembering my little boy and all his friends since kindergarten. "You can't imagine what good timing this has been."
"
posted by Gail @ 5:09 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
What a day!
The hardest part of raising children must be knowing that if you do it right, they are going to leave you one day, but it sounds like you've lost a live-at-home son and gained some regular visitors ;) There's always mail, Skype and Flickr to stay in touch and offering bribes like a free meal helps to bring them back once in a while.
Speaking of Flickr, I hope you sorted out that treetop photo-op, and I don't think you are at all crazy to take advantage of it (Jennifer sounds a little dull or disparaging or at least unadventurous).
It's hard to live with just one person, but the one upside is that it gives you more incentive to try to resolve conflicts because there's just no-one else!
Tangentially, I read Blink recently and it mentions that the number one emotional predictor of fallout in marriage (and I suspect in any relationship) is contempt. Since reading that, I've tried to resolve any hints of that in my relationships (for example, my wife hates blogs and let's say she's not supportive if I mention I've been reading or writing one; I talked about what it means to me and she now accepts that it's worthwhile ;).
Thanks for your note on my blog! (it's pretty dry stuff for most people, I'm just not brave enough to write a "personal" blog).
Colm,
Well I haven't had one family member who has ever expressed an interest in reading anything that I write, even though it's been my livelihood for over two decades. Some will read it if I force the subject, but not one tunes in or expresses an interest.
It doesn't matter. You have a great empathy and a way with words. Be brave and go for two blogs--one technical and one personal!
Also, I made my son's favorite chicken pot pie, then in the rush, forgot to bring it to him!
And QOD, thanks so much for feeling my "pain." I've been so busy lately that I have not been a good blog partner, but you're the best!
Dear Gail, I know this a rough time. Since you and I have talked about David when he was swinging on the monkey bars, I feel like I know him.
I always felt that he was a special boy--extremely intelligent and with a sense of humor that is rare and engaging. I also know something of the special relationship you had with him. I am sure he understands what a wonderful mother he had;he has had ample opportunity to witness his friends' relationships with their mothers and he knows the difference.
In addition to the love, there was the relationship--kindred spirits trading affection embedded in humor and banter. The best combination on the planet has to be a humorous, loving mother--and I know it is one of the rarest things on the planet.
Remember, one day he will be out of college, working and you can entice him over with meals and accolades about whomever he is dating. Then, when he has the first grandchild, you will have a house full again: David, wife, grandchild--plenty to keep you busy and more good stories to put in your book.
I know it won't be easy to adjust, but you are are survivor and have the grit to get er' done.
By the way, I agree with you about Colm; he should be doing a personal blog. His insights and observations are both wise and intelligent. In addition, he has an upbeat perspective that always elevates my mood.
Well Jerry, you've started up the waterworks again. Thanks for your kind and assuring words. I do appreciate your understanding.
Colm,
We're pushing you foreward. Write your own blog, if nothing else to counteract our dreary outlooks. Assign your own code-name but give us an insiders' nod that it's you. What's the harm?; you're many lands away, as are we and we enjoy hearing your insights:)
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