Paralysis? Not Again.

It's college Spring Break 2011 here in Indiana. Spawn visited for two days while going to his annual medical checkups, and it was a nice time. He works in the Biology lab at school, so I'm not complaining that he had to be there some this week. We can always use his money.

You know that song Julie Andrews sings in The Sound of Music - something good about childhood? Hang on. I'll google. You can listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAE8B09jptA. This is how I feel about Spawn and the way he's turned out.  I mean he's not all there he is, standing there, loving me, as the lyrics go. It's not THAT kind of something good. But somewhere, somehow, somebody up there must be overlooking the wicked and loving us pretty fine.

Spawn is finishing college in three years. Booyah, $25K saved. When people have asked if he helps out financially, I have always replied, "He started with a semester of AP class credits, he had two small scholarships, and he's attended two summers and worked two summers. And he has a 3.4 GPA. He has very much done his part, that kid." The graduation plan, as I knew it, was that he'd U-Haul it back to Indianapolis in August after his last class and work at the Broad Ripple Brew Pub where he's worked on and off since high school. He'd live on the cheap with a Pub friend, take the GRE in the fall, and find just the right grad school for 2012.

Well, Sunday night, during a commercial, he casually mentioned his whole new plan. "Lots of the people who work at the Pub came back after college, and they've never left. I don't want that to happen to me." Point well taken as Mama would not be happy with that ROI, either. So, this summer, he's taking the GRE and applying for temporary DNR (Dept of Natural Resources) research park jobs that start in the fall. (One he liked but that started too soon, as an example, involved taking samples in State parks between Maine and Virginia. Lil' angel bastard.) Then, while working in his field, he'll apply to grad schools for next year.

The bottom line is, after August, he could be anywhere and more than likely not in Indiana. I told him that if the timing required him to stay with me, it would be fine no matter where I was. He said, "Thanks, but I actually have a place to stay, if I need it."

Gone again. I went through PSM's Paralysis Stage once before, and it was harsh. Took me almost two years to get through. This isn't quite the same. This time, it's for good.

So somewhere in my youth or childhood, as the song goes, I must have done something good. Actually, what a good job HE did!! Yay us/him/me, right? Right. But. Freedom. I've never been free before. It's paradoxical, I know, but I'm paralyzed by it. Again. I can't deal with (*any expression like that is extremely relative during this time of Japan) two more years of it. In 2013, I'll be 50, for God's sake. When the real hardening of things starts to kick in.

**Any and all words of wisdom and motion are welcomed and appreciated.

The Biggest Impact

In a self-improvement class I recently failed, we were asked to write about the moment that had the biggest impact on our lives. This is what I wrote.

“Don’t you want to hold him?”

If he asked me that one more time, I would kick him. Even in the compromising and restrained position, I still could have mustered up enough strength to break a leg free and get him in the head.

The nurse had picked up on my frame of mind and offered him instead to his father. And he was panicked - holding him like one would a tray of food, in sort of half-outstretched arms away from his chest, as if to make sure he wasn’t fully committing to the responsibility. (A sign of things to come.)

He kept looking at me disapprovingly, too. I was the mother, after all. I should want to slobber all over him. Of course I would. Any mother would. But I didn’t.

I was given the aftermath treatment while the nurse retrieved him from Dad to wrap him in fresh blankets and top him off with a baby-blue knit hat. Then, she gingerly set him down beside me on the bed. “Why don’t ya’ll just sit by each other for a little bit”, she suggested. He looked like a tiny doll of a person with closed eyes that were more like two slits between red, flaky, wrinkled fleshy cheeks. And it didn’t move. In fact, it seemed barely alive. This was it? All that pain? All those months? For this? I felt nothing.

Then, we were wheeled back to our room and forced into a whir of activity, with nurses from every direction bringing me baby this after baby that, each with long lists and instructions.

Just when I thought it was over, Nurse Evil #8000 came in with feeding supplies. “Okay, here we go!! Baby’s first bottle!!! You ready?”

I raised my eyebrows to question her sanity, and the bitch snickered. I swear she did. She said, “Aw, you two will be just fine. Have fun!” And she left!! Imagine. It’s like she didn’t care one bit about this baby.

We were alone. Dad had gone to make phone calls or watch TV or who knows what. It was just us. (Second sign of the life to come.) And still, I felt nothing. He drank the whole bottle, never moving or opening his eyes. I fell asleep, too, but I must have had the decency to hold onto him, because when someone came to whisk him off to officially be registered with the human race, neither of us had moved. (Not that he could’ve gone far on his own – I just mean that he wasn’t on the floor in a puddle of head injury blood or anything.)

“You’re taking him away?” I asked, trying not to sound excited.

“Yes, dear, but just for a few minutes,” she said.

“Oh, no hurry,” I said on the outside. “Kidnap him. In the name of all that is decent and holy, I’m begging you to kidnap him,” I screamed on the inside.

I was alone. I could breathe. I felt like my normal self again. I wanted to go home. Well, I actually wanted to turn back time, but going home was second best. And just as I began to feel comfortable again, here he came, still wrapped like a big ol’ sausage rolling around in his shiny acrylic cart.

“Back so soon?” I asked.

This nurse just ignored me - didn’t even have the decency to snicker like the other one. He, on the other hand, tilted his head toward me, opened his eyes, smiled, and then laughed. Laughed! The outside world would say this was gas or some other bodily fluke, but, for me, it was just what I needed. I am still convinced that this kid totally got the sarcasm. He was letting me know that he wasn’t any happier about this situation than I was and, had he been born 50 and Don Rickles, would’ve sniped, “Seriously? Her again? I’m going to need to talk to somebody about this.”

In that flicker of a moment, we connected. I was his, and he was suddenly mine. All mine and just mine. He would become the love of my life, and I would become his mom. Whether we liked it or not.

Signs

Looking back, Diary, I know there were signs. Ones that I would’ve paid more attention to, if there were time to give great amounts of thought to the future.

Not long after we had moved 500 miles away, Spawn and I sat on the couch after dinner to watch a little television. He was good company for watching sitcoms. We have the same sense of humor and always laugh at the same scenes. But this particular night, after the first show, he stretched his 12-year-old arms a little, like it was no big deal, and said, “I think I’ll go in my room.” Innocent enough, at the time, but it turned into a nightly thing. Eventually (kindness on his part, if I choose to look at it like that, which I do), he dropped the pretense of sitting on the couch with me in the first place. No more downtime together. Sure, we’d talk in the car, at dinner, about schedules and school things, but the best times of doing nothing together were officially over.

Not long after that, Spawn had a holiday from school. When we were scheduling that week's activities, I casually mentioned that I could take that day off from work and we could make it a long weekend. As he stomped out of the room, he spewed, "Fine, just RUIN my day off!" And meant it.

The biggest sign was more of a blow, really. We were discussing whether I would move the summer before he would start college. We had just gotten home from voting – his first time. We were renting the house we were living in and it was big for the two of us, not to mention expensive. I could save money if I moved to a smaller place in another part of town. But, that would put me farther away from his summer job and friends for when he was home. Finally, he put a stop to the whole dilemma by saying, “You have got to stop basing all your decisions on me. I’m going to be in Bloomington.” I would never have let him see me cry nor let him know that I had no idea how to make decisions based on me.

There were more signs, of course, but these were the ones I remember most, Diary. Probably because they still make me the soggiest.

You Still Here?

Diary, I swear that as much as I love him and don’t want him to leave, I cannot WAIT for him to go.

For two weeks now, Spawn’s guitar has been sitting in its stand in front of the spare bedroom closet. Each morning and night, I fumble around it getting or returning clothes. And each day, I say something to him about moving it.

Yesterday, I tripped over it. I knew this would happen.
 
“I TOLD YOU a hundred times TO MOVE THAT DAMN THING. GET IN THERE AND MOVE IT. NOWWWW!”

He reappeared and said, “I moved it next to the elliptical. There’s no danger of you being anywhere near it now.”

My little monster has grown up to be a big sarcastic monster. It's my own fault, really.