Moony Mommies and Holiday Nostalgia Attacks

He looked lost- Which wasn't hard to understand given the greater picture...The installation of the new TV to the new HD box and pre-existing surround-sound system.



This is what I like best about the holidays- the chance to slow down long enough to watch and enjoy the world around me, in particular, my boys.





And to see how my family sees me-



The sweatshirt I am wearing seems to reappear every Christmas. The boys were in preschool. The teachers pulled the children out into the hallway, dipped their hands in green paint and made wreaths out of their hand prints. I remember opening their package on Christmas morning, pulling out the sweatshirt and crying.

The next year- another sweatshirt. This time their feet formed a moose head and their hand prints were the antlers. And I cried, touched by the little, carefully preserved bits of their rapidly passing childhoods.

Every year I pull the sweatshirts out and wear them. I point to the images emblazoned across my chest proudly, mushy with my soupy-mama love and memories of the sweet scent of boy hugs and kisses. The objects of my affection roll their eyes in mock, or maybe real, horror. The girlfriend smiles indulgently and exchanges a knowing glance with the boys.

It is an all too familiar ritual- sappy mothers mooning over their grown children during the holiday season.

The Unnamed Ones take it in stride, as they do most everything these days.

Moving On...

We are in the apartment of the Eldest Unnamed One. It is the big, final Move In Day and the time has come to say goodbye. He sits in the swivel armchair he’s spent the morning assembling while I lean against the doorframe beside him.

“You know,” he says. “It’s weird. One minute you live at home and the next you’re in some apartment on your own.”

My heart snaps right in two. I can’t help myself. I reach over and pretend to flick a piece of dust from a lock of his hair. I won’t make this any harder than I know it already is- for both of us. After all, this is the brave boy who finally burst into tears on his fifth birthday after I’d said for the millionth time that day, “Now you’re Mama’s Big Boy.”

“I don’t want to be your Big Boy!” he’d sobbed. I want to be who I am!



I realize now it was my adjustment to make- my baby was no longer a toddler. It was time to let go of that phase and begin the next one. I was the one who had to remind myself of that, over and over again, until I could find some peace with losing my treasured baby to a more independent child- the child who marched up the steps of the Kindergarten bus and never once looked back.

I know now how hard that must have been for him, what inner strength my child uses to make those big transitions seem easy. Funny how we learn so much, often in retrospect, from our precious children.

Lately, more so than ever, I try and think what my own father would do- or did do- when faced with one of these life-altering situations. I summon up memory and try to respond as I imagine he would. This one is easy. We had so many goodbyes, so many times, and always he made the parting easy on me.

Once, after I’d moved 800 miles away to live in the South, I asked him how he stood the long times between our visits because I was so homesick.

“Oh,” he said. “I create my Nancy in my head and even when you’re not here, when I miss you, I just summon her up and there’s “my” Nancy. I store up our times together and play them back and it’s like you’re right here.”

I believed him then. I felt much less guilty about having chosen to run off to the far away south. I had more strength to live my new life.

Every single leave-taking was the same, even his dying. He always smiled but he always walked us out to our cars then stood watching until we were out of sight. The last image we would have in our rearview mirrors was always that of him standing there, smiling and waving goodbye.

Later, when the boys were teenagers and I knew how much our visits meant, I would drive around the bend in the road, stop and cry because it was always so hard to leave him.

He would always be sure, at some point in our visits to tell me how proud he was of us, how great it was to watch us becoming the people we were. Dad packed us full of confidence and unconditional love- the sent us back out into our worlds without one string attached.

And we always came back home.

“It’s weird. One minute you live at home and the next you’re in some apartment on your own,” he said.

“I know,” I answered. “It’s gotta feel a little strange but cool, huh? I mean, your first apartment. College. Wow! I am so proud of you. You guys are gonna be fine.”

“I know.”

“Besides,” I can’t help but add. “We’re only an hour away and you know how us moms are, always looking to feed you or maybe even pop in now and then, just to maybe bring you a casserole or something. It’s not like you can get rid of us so easily.”

The Wench Beloved, having just been through all of this with her mom, studies the screen of her laptop with fierce intensity, pretending not to be a part of this conversation but I know her by now. I see the quick blink of her eyes and feel the emotion that sits just on the edge of spilling over.



I stand up; look at the Youngest Unnamed One and Mertis and say, “Well, we’d better get on the road and let these two get settled in.”

“I’ll walk you out,” the Eldest said. There is so much of his grandfather in this child. I love him so very much.

We walk out to the parking lot and he watches us from the top of the fire escape. I remember suddenly all the times he’d ride off to school with his father and I would come running out at the last minute in my bunny slippers and bathrobe, my hair sticking out at all angles and cry, “Bye-bye, Honeycakes!”

“Wait!” I instruct. “Don’t move! I need a picture!” A picture just like every other first day of school, a picture to remember the passing of yet another year. A picture that doesn’t need to be taken because the memories are etched forever in my heart.

It's That Time of Year Again...

It's that time of year again.



No, not Tax Day. It's Marti's Birthday...



Which this year also coincides with The Prom.

Once again I found myself struggling to make a corsage for The Beloved as The Eldest Unnamed One had to have one that went with her gown...(Which someone said was blue-green...Not!)



I think after a few years of practice I may be getting the hang of it.



They are so happy, so full of the world and its possibilities.



I'm exhausted. It's been a day of baking, housecleaning, celebrating and trying hard not to remember that in a few short months my boy and his friends will be flying the nest and leaving the world we have shared for 18 short years.

I suppose that means Bailey will be getting more haircuts and having to put up with a neurotic owner who shaves his hair off and dresses him up funny costumes...

Happy Mother's Day From Your Devoted Son...

When Bessie first came to the nursing home she was a nervous wreck.

Whenever you're anything at the nursing home other than demented or deleriously happy, they call me in, the psychiatric social worker. It's my job to help you find happiness, or at least get you to shut up about whatever it is that's bothering you.

Truly, sometimes that's what all it boils down to. Call in the social worker and make this problem go away.

Only I don't do that. I can't. First of all- Come on, if you were in a nursing home, would you be happy about it? Secondly, if someone's not happy, it's flat out wrong to recommend medicating them into a stupor so no one's bothered by your painful transition into Happyville.

So I try and figure out what's the worst part of being stuck in Hell, then try to see if I can't turn the flames down enough for my people to bear their new situation. Sometimes, more often than I'd like, there is nothing I can do. But when Bessie came to stay in her new home, I was able to help.

All I had to do was get her quite wealthy son to agree to come up off $12 a month so she could get her hair done. The sad thing was- this was no small feat.

Do you know that if all that stands between you and the street is your Medicaid check, the nursing home takes all but $30 bucks of it in order to cover your stay? Now, in a lot of cases that check doesn't go very far at all. Five hundred and something bucks to provide care, room and board...give or take $70 for an aspirin.

So there you are with $30 every month to clothe yourself and get your hair done. The hairdresser costs $12 a pop to wash, trim and set your hair.

When Bessie's son said his mom didn't need the services of a hairdresser, Bessie nearly lost her mind. You see, Bessie worked hard in the tobacco factory all of her life, raised her children without benefit of a father or child support, and still managed as time went by and the children left home, to get her hair done every Saturday morning.

The nursing home social worker and I went round and round with the man just to get him to leave enough of the $30 in her account for her to get her hairdone at the home once a month! Finally, the activity director flat out told the man the $30 belonged to his mother to spend as she wished and she would be getting her hair done every other week.

But it's been two years and Ms. Bessie has forgotten the struggle. She sighs and says it would be nice if she could afford to have her hair washed and set once a week.

Her cousin, who already comes over and dyes her aunt's hair once a month, shakes her head. "He's loaded," she mutters.

And now this ingrate son won't float his mom for two extra hairdos a month! $24 bucks.

"I bailed him and an even dozen of his friends out that time they got in trouble," Bessie says, giving her visiting cousin a knowing look. "Lost a week's wages goin' with them to court and God knows how much money bailin' him out. And one of them boys was the preacher's son, too!"

Bessie's cousin looks at me while Bessie searches through an old black and white composition book to come up with her current bank balance. "He's an idiot!" she mouths.

You think?

I spend a half an hour consulting with the billing department only to find out later from the activity director that the son takes all of Bessie's extra money. This is why the cousin buys Bessie's clothing and snacks and why a grandson takes her home with him on Christmas.

Bessie even set this child up with his own business when his job got too physically demanding.

When I say I have to go, Bessie says "Oh, don't leave! Just stay here all evenin' and set with us." Her new dentures, a size too large for her mouth slip from side to side as Bessie struggles to smile and talk without losing her upper plate.

I hug her, remembering one of the past social workers telling me that Bessie's son now has a lovely vacation home in the mountains. I want to kick his ass.

Instead I come home and pause for a few moments in the doorways of each of my sons' rooms.

"Listen," I say. "If you two strike it rich and I, God forbid, wind up in a nursing home and want to get my hair done and it only costs $12 bucks a week, please don't be such a tight-ass you can't spring for a once a week cut and curl!"

"Huh?" they say.

"I mean it," I say. "Do you really think a measly $12 is too much to ask after all we've been through? I mean, I get my hair done now in the outside world and it costs about a hundred bucks so I really don't see that..."

"Why do you pay a hundred now?" the practical Youngest Unnamed One asks.

I sigh. "It's a long story," I say. "And I don't do it often, but mainly it's because I tried to do it myself for so long it took extra just to repair the damage and really, that's beside the damned point. Just promise me you won't let it come down to not even getting a $12 wash and set."

"Mother," the Oldest says, sighing the word in his best, long-suffering tone. "Of course we wouldn't do that!"

He is mentally telegraphing his brother the phrase I have heard him say again and again, "Just agree with her. It's easier. You always get all up into the details and then she goes on and on!"

I stand between their two rooms, looking at the backs of their heads because they are both on the computer while having this serious conversation with their sainted mother. I am trying to decide if it's worth the energy to walk into each boy's room and whop him upside the head like I usually do for emphasis.

But I am too tired to put forth the effort.

Besides, I am probably just being irrational.

Again.

Transitions

It was six months yesterday. Six months since Dad died.

I can't begin to tell you how I miss him. I'm sure there's someone in your life whom you miss every bit as much as I miss Dad, so I'm sure you know what it is to face that kind of hole in your life.

But...

Dad wouldn't want me to sit around feeling sorry for myself. He would want me to reach deep inside my heart and pull out my "reality" of him. He would want me to find comfort in his memory, strength from the adventures and lessons we shared and joy in the length and depth of time we shared- 51 years of my life spent in the sheltering love of the greatest man I ever knew. Pretty neat, huh?

There isn't a day that passes that I don't think of him, or go to the well and draw strength from something he taught me.

Today I am hoping I do his memory justice by remembering to choose my battles wisely.

This is quite helpful when face with teenagers, especially the Eldest Unnamed One. He's growing up. Soon he'll be gone, making the transition to adulthood and his own life. It is a wonder to watch this almost-man take his own life into his hands and run with it. But it is also painful.

I knew this day would come. I knew it would feel like it was all happening too soon, too suddenly. I knew I would grieve. And I am.

But just as I let Dad go, I must also let the Eldest Unnamed One go forth into the world. And I must not cling onto him because if I do this, would I not be saying "I don't think you can handle the world on your own"? Wouldn't that send the message that I expect him to fail?

He's not going to fail. He's going to soar. In fact, sometimes I worry he'll leave home and forget all about me!

It's like that first day of kindergarten, when he got on the bus and didn't look back and it broke my heart. I stood there at the bus stop, tears leaking down my cheeks, feeling quite sorry for myself. That's when the brash redhead from the Bronx who lived across from the bus stop and also had a kindergartner, took matters into her own hands. "Hey, what're you cryin' for? If he didn't look back, it's because you did your job. You raised him to go out there and not be afraid. He knows you'll be there when he comes back because you always are there for him- but he doesn't need you to hold his hand because you also taught him he can do it."

Well, hell. If you put it that way...

"You did your job," she said.

I have never forgotten that and I'm glad because I think I'm going to need to remember those words come August when he leaves for UNC.

I will stand in the driveway, tears rolling down my cheeks and I will feel Dad's hand on my shoulder.

I know the ones we love are never truly lost to us.

In my heart I know this but aren't transitions a bitch?

Oh, to be 16 Again!!!

How's that for a picture of true happiness? A Rage Against the Machine T-Shirt, A pink feather tiara and an army jacket blowing out the 16 candles (Hanukkah candles on sale from Tar-jet make great birthday torches!) on his Snickers Ice Cream cake.

That's us...always original and quite often tacky!


I left the cake ordering up to the Eldest Unnamed One and the Double Witch...and they tried to do the right thing...The people at Cold Stone asked how many people would be eating cake, they said 5 and so when I arrived to pick it up- it was tiny...but goooood!

I know, it was the second day of Lose the Halloween Poundage...but I look at it like this: If it's a special occasion or you might never get to eat it again, it's calorie free.

The 2 pieces of Dove dark chocolate I later ate right before bed were just an oh-what-the-hell afterthought.

It was a great cake, a very special occasion and totally worth it.

I just can't believe I only have 2 years left with this precious one before he too abandons ship...er, I mean leaves for college.

Every day he is wiser and funnier and totally one of the great joys of my life. I'm pretty lucky to have such amazing kids.

And I've totally adopted the Double Witch, even if she has stolen the Eldest Unnamed's heart...

Now...onward to defrock the Christmas tree and remove the birthday balloons from the lighting-up reindeer in the front yard!