Randomness

Looking over the last few posts, I realize that my family has a way of conversing with each other that occasionally goes off into flights of fancy. A comment will be commented upon, and once again, until it reaches into obscure territory that has nothing to do with the originating comment, or often, reality. Sometimes we'll say things just out of the blue.

My son has a word for it: random.

For instance, quite a while ago, I was sitting at my chair spinning yarn (I have a spinning wheel), when I looked over at him sitting on couch watching TV and said, "Derek, are you taking drugs?"

He looked at me, his attention slowly weaning itself from the tube to me. "What?"

"Are you taking drugs?"

His brow furrowed. "No."

"Oh, okay." I returned to my spinning.

A commercial came on and he switched his attention to me again. "Why do you ask? Do you think I am?"

"No," I said, and it's true; he finds the smell of alcohol disgusting, and is probably as squeaky-clean about drugs and cigarettes as any kid could be. "I'm asking because I'm a Mom, and Moms have to ask things like that on a routine basis, just in case. It's their job."

"That's really random, Mom," he said.

"I know," I said. "But it has to be done."

"What, the randomness or asking about drugs?"

"Both," I said. "Parents should keep their kids on their toes. It's good for them. It keeps them alert."

"Alert? About what?"

"About things like that blue shirt you're wearing," I said after frantically casting about in my mind for something he should be alert to right now, but failing.

He looked at his shirt. "It's not blue, it's yellow."

"Precisely," I said. "It's good that you're alert about what color shirt you're wearing."

He gave me a long look. "You're weird, Mom."

Now that I think of it, his whole riff about fulfilling a wish to jam with Eric Clapton via the Make A Wish Foundation was probably revenge.

--Karen H.

Drastic ambition

"Mom, how old do you have to be to qualify for a wish from the Make A Wish Foundation?" my son asked, emerging from the bathroom, guitar in hand. He has a habit of enclosing himself in the bathroom and playing his guitar, sometimes with the amp, sometimes not. I don't know why, maybe it's the acoustics. He'll spend hours in there practicing.

Immediately, I froze, wondering if somehow he had contracted a death-dealing disease but hadn't told me yet...but no, that couldn't be, because otherwise I would have been notified when he had his last physical. But then I thought, wait, maybe it's one of his friends, or a child he knows about.

"Mom?"

"Uh, I don't know," I said. Much moved by his apparent kind-heartedness and wanting to help, I opened my browser and Googled "Make a Wish Foundation." "It looks like between the ages of 2 1/2 and 18."

"Dang."

"What's wrong?" I asked, my concern rising.

"I only have a year to get leukemia, make a wish to jam on the guitar with Eric Clapton, have that fulfilled, and then somehow get better."

I groaned. Yet another example of an adolescent's sense of immortality. "No. You do not want to get leukemia, trust me on this."

He sighed. "Yeah, I guess you're right. With my luck I'll get it when I'm 40, when it's too late."

"With any luck, you won't get it at all! You'll have to think of a better way to someday jam with Eric Clapton."

"What if I got run over by a truck? Would that get me a wish?"

"No. Besides, you might get your hands crushed and then you couldn't jam with anyone."

"Huh, yeah. Don't want that." A thoughtful look came over his face. "Lyme disease?"

"NO!" I said.

He looked offended. "I'm just wondering!"

"No diseases!" I said firmly. "No accidents, and I don't care how much you want to play music with Eric Clapton. You'll just have to practice and practice until you get so ridiculously good at playing any kind of music that just one riff played by your incredibly nimble fingers will astonish everyone for miles around, to the point where they will follow you around like the Pied Piper, including--"

"Eric Clapton! And then he will want to jam with me because my guitar playing is so awesome as to defy description, and I'll say, okay, dude, if you can keep up, and meanwhile I'm thinking, 'eat my dust' because I will be SO better than Clapton."

"Exactly," I said, heartlessly sacrificing Eric Clapton to ignominy for the sake of my son's health and welfare.

"Cool!" he said, and returned to the bathroom.

"While you're at it, you might clean the toilet if you're going to spend some time in there," I said, hoping against hope that he might remember to do that.

"Sure," he said, but his voice was already sounding absent.

I wonder if there's a way to attach a toilet brush to an electric guitar, so that he could clean the toilet while he played? Probably the only way to get him to do it on a regular basis. (sigh)

--Karen H.

Soft as Cookie Dough. But NOT cute!

My son came home one day and told me that his friends at school AND from church choir think I'm cute.

I said, "what do you MEAN cute?" Cute does not sit well with me. Hey, old-school feminist here, and a feminist can be anything she wants, but not cute.

He said, "You know, sweet and kindly cute. The sort that bakes cookies and wouldn't hurt a fly."

"You of course told them that they were wrong, that I'm really a nasty mean mom who bullies you daily, and who never appreciates you enough," I said, trying to maintain a position of strength. "Teenagers are supposed to say things like that about their parents, because of their adolescent rebellion and all. And by the way, the cookie dough is in the fridge, second shelf."

"No," he said, grinning and patting me on the head from his ridiculously tall height, "I said they were right. My friends are pretty smart."

"You realize this totally destroys the image I was trying to portray of someone totally kick-ass and, you know, sort of Clint Eastwood-like, except female."

"Sorry, Mom, you're just going to have to live with the image of cuteness."

"I'm not baking those cookies this time," I said, putting on a stern look.

"That's fine, I'll bake 'em. Did you get my favorite, the chocolate chip kind with macadamia nuts?"

"Yeah, I got 'em."

"Thanks, Mom." He kissed me on the forehead. "You're a sweet, kindly, cute mom."

Argh. Either I'm going to have to put on a tougher image, or I'm going to have to stop buying cookie dough.

--Karen H.

School Bus

We sat down to dinner yesterday, when my husband John looked quickly from me to our son and then back again. He said, "I realized this morning that it's the last day I'll ever see Derek get on a school bus."

"Oh my God," I said, and put my hand over my heart, where I felt a sudden empty-nest ache. "You're right! It's the last time he'll ever be on a school bus. It's been...years. Ever since..."

"I was in 7th grade," Derek said with a look of disgust on his face. "You drove me to school all during elementary school. It's only been five years on the bus, Mom. No big deal, and in fact, thank God it's over."

"Five years is a lot in developmental terms," I said firmly. "A lot." I sighed, thinking of those five years. "Five whole years getting on a school bus, and now it's over, because it's the last day of school. The last day of high school."

"No, it's not," Derek said. He glanced at his father, who was paying deep attention to his dinner. "Tomorrow is the last day of school, and you have to drive me there because I won't be going until about 10 o'clock."

"I'll have to drive you," I said. "I remember when I used to drive you to elementary school, how we'd rush like crazy to make it out the door, how you dawdled over your clothes, forgetting your homework--"

"Right," Derek interrupted. "That was a long time ago. And now I'm done with high school."

"And done with riding on the school bus," I said, sighing. "It's the end of an era."

He groaned, and looked as if he wanted to bang his head on his plate. "NO. It's the BEGINNING of one. The BEGINNING of an era." He looked at his dad. "May I be excused?" He rose and put away his plate before his dad nodded his agreement.

John looked at me. "We have to get our licks in before he goes, right?"

"That's right," I said. "As many as we can."

We smiled at each other and bent once more to our dinner.

--Karen H.

A little less of the empty nest syndrome

I'm looking at my kid's messy room, the kind that is akin to the Augean stables, and know that once again, he will forget to buy the tickets to the graduation ceremony, like I asked him a million times already, or at least it feels like that. He's left his wallet on the floor again. Actually, considering all the things parents have to go through to raise a child right, I think we are owed that "asked him a million times already" feeling, especially through the teenaged years. And I know I'm going to ask him this afternoon, where are the tickets? And he's going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot. And I'm going to feel this little burny sensation, and go through all the reasons I love him and why he's really a good kid, and then I'm going to open my mouth and give him what for.

Because I worry. I think, he's a procrastinator, he's messy, he doesn't know how to handle money like he should, he has putrid phone manners, and soon he's going to go to college. Without me to nag him, he'll leave his dorm room so messy, he'll trip over his backpack and slice his hand on the bounced check he left on the floor, it'll get infected, and he'll die of blood poisoning, or at least be hounded the rest of his life by Bad Credit (which figures in my mind as this huge hairy beast with Really Big Claws and one eye fixed on your pocketbook). And then, with this picture in mind, I yell at him as soon as I see a snitty teenaged eye-roll--which may happen within the the first few minutes of him walking into the house from school--because I have to get my licks in to set him straight on the narrow road to redemption in the few months I have left as mom-in-residence.

The few months I have left to get it right.

Yeah. That's what it's all about. Me getting it right in the last few months with this kid. Just in case I didn't get it right the last 18 years.

Taking a deep breath.

There's a Bible on my desk--I left it there from Sunday, so you can guess where my son gets his messy nature (hey, so I don't want him to be like me in this!). I distractedly open it up, and it falls to the story about Jesus when he got in trouble with his parents. I breathe another deep breath--of relief.

You know the story. The one where the Holy Family goes to Jerusalem when Jesus is an adolescent, along with friends and relatives, in a nice big happy party. They do the Passover gig, and then they start off to go home to Nazareth. They're a day away from the Big City, and then Mary turns to Joseph:

Mary: Dear, have you seen Jesus lately?
Joseph: No. I thought he was with you.
Mary, beginning to feel anxious: No, I thought he was with you!
Joseph: He's not with his cousins? Or his friends?
Mary: No, I just looked!
Mary and Joseph, looking at each other in panic: "Oh my God, we left him in Jerusalem!"

So they go rushing back amongst the teeming population of Jerusalem, having nightmares about their boy amongst hostile Romans who'd as soon stick you with a sword as look at you, and greedy acquisitive slave traders who would be all too happy to get their hands on a nice healthy boy, and who knows what other sickos he might encounter that exist in places that a boy might just wander into, especially a friendly sort of boy like Jesus. And then there is this little added tidbit that he is also the Son of God entrusted to their care, and probably the Most High would at least be a little bit ticked off at their oversight.

But they do find him, being all smart and having fun with his new friends at the Temple. And I'm sure the elders there are patting his back and nodding approvingly at Mary and Joseph and saying, "fine, smart boy you've got there, you should be proud, because he's amazing, you know that?"

They are proud, but as soon as they get Jesus on the road, all hell--er, so to speak--breaks loose. "What the Gehenna were you thinking? Didn't you know your mother was crying her eyes out?" "Don't you know you could have been hurt? Why didn't you TELL US WHERE YOU WERE?"

And what do they get from Jesus? Backtalk, that's what, and I bet it was with that adolescent snitty eye-roll, too. "Mom, Dad, I was just FINE. I was with my FRIENDS, and--" he lifts his nose in the air, "Doing my Father's work." As if Joseph's carpentry was just one up on shoveling pig slop.

It says in the Bible that they didn't understand, and yeah, they probably didn't understand how he could be the Son of God and still be a bratty adolescent. But you have to figure, if he was flesh and bone and went from being a little baby to a man, there was all sorts of things like dirty diapers to be changed and skinned knees to be cleaned up, and I bet adolescent hormones and snitty eye-rolls were part of the package. In fact, I bet the phrase "and he was subject unto them," was a nice way of saying that Joseph then and there took Jesus by the ear and said, "you are sticking to us like GLUE until we get home to Nazareth." And Mary added, "you are SO grounded, kiddo."

I'm not sure Mary and Joseph cured Jesus of his back-talk, though. He still was doing a lot of verbal sniping at the Pharisees as an adult. And we know how much trouble that got him into.

But it did make me feel a little better, and let go just a bit more. If the Holy Family left behind their son when he was 12 years old for more than a day in the Big City and got back talk from him, my husband and I, we're not doing too bad. (Hey, WE didn't leave our kid behind in the Big City!) I guess there's only so much you can do with a kid before you have to let him be what he has to be.

--Karen H.