Somebody Up There Needs Me

Up early.  Can't sleep.  Coffee is brewing (thank you, Tom).  Maggie Mae can't sleep either because she's seen my suitcase by the door, and she knows sumpins up.  We're going to Indy today because somebody up there needs me.

Check list for trip:

1.  Pack Jason's dinner for tonight in the cooler and put in trunk.
2.  Don't forget Julie's birthday present.
3.  Call Judy about building a bookshelf for her.
4.  Visit Mother everyday in the nursing home.
5.  Prepare Mother's taxes.
6.  Check with Amy to see if she needs me.
7.  Does Cathy need a tree cut down?
8.  What about Maggie?  Does she need anything?
9.  Can Harold use my help?
10.  Call Jason to let him know I'm coming to Indy.
11.  Change last sentence on yesterday's post to read:
     "I need to be needed, and I hope that's okay."

Letting Go

"It's a mother thing," Tom says in his attempt to rationalize my lingering concern over Jason's well-being.  By including me in with all of the other mothers in the whole wide world and Venus, he's telling me that, in the land of motherhood, my emotional hovering, my need to fix what is broken, my pain, disappointment, and sorrow that accompanies Jason's pain, disappointment and sorrow, my sleepless nights worrying, is perfectly normal. "The mother you were, and the mother you are is okay.  It's what mothers do."

"Not so fast!" some of my friends, family, ex-husband, and Jason's former teachers say.

"Is it true, Carol Louise, that you ran ahead of Jason so you could remove all obstacles in his path? That's not okay." 

"Well, let me think about that question.  It was oh so long ago, you know.  And my memory is not what it used to be.  Did I run?  Was that the question? No, but I jogged sometimes.  I played tennis.  Does that count?"

"Didn't you cater to your son? That's not okay."

"Uh, sorry.  Not sure I heard your question correctly.  Did I cater?  No, but my friend Judy was thinking about catering.  Could you have me confused with her?  And she's a runner, too."

"Jason is a grown man now and doing quite well on his own four hundred miles north of you. He doesn't need or want you to be concerned, anxious, or worried.  You don't need to fix anything.  You can relax, get some sleep.  Letting go is okay."

"Uh...uh...did you say something?  It's my hearing, you know.  Not so good anymore.  If you will excuse me, I'm busy and don't have time for your well meaning but unsolicited advice.  I'm packing to go to Indianapolis.  Jason needs me, and, by the way, that's okay."

Imagine That

On Jason's second birthday, I stood at the upstairs bathroom window and watched spring perform its magic in the barnyard and fields that surrounded our home. I opened the window to welcome the warm breeze and smell the freshly-plowed ground.  A row of red and yellow tulips lined up perfectly along a single rusty barbed wire that separated the barnyard from the field, and a dozen chickens pecked at the soft ground below me.

We had made it through another brutal winter in a house that was a hundred years old and broken down.  The cracks in the exterior walls were so big, snow would often times find its way inside.  When J.J. was home, he would keep the wood-burning stove red hot (an ability I never mastered), but during his absences, Jason and I were unbearably cold and rarely took off our coats.  With spring's arrival, hope returned, along with a resolve to "just hold on; all would be well."  

As I stood in the window and watched J.J. on his big red tractor planting soybeans in the back forty,  I thought about how much I loved my life, my husband, son and two step-daughters, Amy and Stacia, and, at that moment, I couldn't imagine life anywhere else but on the farm.

When Jason turned five, his memories of the farm had all but faded.  He was a city boy now and living in a house that was built in a day in a neighborhood that was built in a week.  The backyard could be mowed in five minutes, and if the next-door-neighbor fell out of bed, every house on the block shook.  J.J. was an every-other-weekend dad,  I worked full time and went to college part time, and when the babysitter said, "This is too hard. I quit!" my boy became a latch-key kid.  But Jason enjoyed his life on the cul-de-sac with his menagerie of friends and endless activities, and he couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

At the same time Jason was turning double digits, I was drawing up plans to enlarge our house by converting the garage into a "Jason Room." One construction project turned into another and soon I had our little brown house with yellow shutters exactly as I wanted it, and I couldn't imagine ever moving away from the southwest side of Indianapolis and my labor of love.

Some time during Jason's twenty-first year while he was still living in the little house on the cul-de-sac that I had made so comfortable he couldn't ever imagine leaving, ever, I sold the house and moved to Florida. Imagine that!

I Saw Jason Today

"That's my boy!" I yelled. "Oh my goodness!  That's Jason!" He was by himself outside the Racetrac gas station in Clayton, Georgia.  Tom, Maggie Mae, and I had gone to Clayton to eat at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Ishy's, and were heading back to Franklin when Tom noticed the gas warning light.

Tom was pumping gas and Maggie Mae was asleep on the center console, but as soon as I started yelling and pointing to Jason, she was on my lap with her head out the window.  "What? Where? Did someone say 'squirrel'?"  
I recognized him immediately.  What caught my attention was this blonde-haired little man trying to open the door to leave the gas station.  He was pushing and pushing when a bigger man came along and helped him out.  Jason looked up and gave the man a big smile, and that's when I noticed the missing front teeth.  Oh, my goodness!  That's Jason!  That's my boy.

He was wearing a yellow T-shirt, Wrangler jeans, and muddy white tennis shoes.  His hair was all tousled like he hadn't combed it in a week, and his face was smeared with something he'd just eaten.  I wanted to jump out of the truck and run to him and plant kisses all over his filthy face and hug his breath away, but instead I just sat motionless and looked back in time twenty-six years as my five-year-old Jason climbed up into the back seat of a Ford F350 Diesel truck and buckled himself in.

As the truck with my beautiful little boy was backing out of its parking spot, I saw my son again.  This time thirty-one year-old Jason was sitting in the driver's seat with five-year-old Jason sitting right behind him.  That's right!  I saw Jason twice today.  

Yep!  I'm crying.

(Written Sunday, March 17)

Too Much Mothering

She called to talk about Jason.  It wasn't the first time she would call and it wouldn't be the last.  At the time I was aggravated at my son's sixth grade teacher's parenting suggestions, and I didn't understand what she meant by "too much mothering."   What? Me? Mother Jason too much?  No way! Not possible!  Nope!  So, instead of telling her what I really thought about her unsolicited intrusion into Jason's and my life, I lied and told her I would consider her recommendations.  Then I hung up the phone and did Jason's homework.

When I was in my twenties, my doctor told me I'd never be able to have children, so when I discovered I was pregnant at thirty-four, I was ambivalent.  I had always wanted children, but my life, at the moment, wasn't suited for that responsibility.  Not everyone was happy about me being with child, especially my OBGYN who said, "WHAT?  You're too old to have children!!"  So, what's a pregnant old lady to do?  I had the baby, that's what.

I didn't think I was capable of loving another human being as much as I loved my newborn son.  My parenting strategy was simple.  I would raise my boy with equal doses of love and discipline.  When other parents were having difficulties with their obstreperous little brats, I would smile and walk right past them with my obedient child in tow.  I'd have him right where I wanted him, under my control, and  there would be no doubt in my smart little boy's mind who was the boss.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha ha ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Okay, it's not that funny!  I'll admit it;  I might have been a bit naive about child rearing.  In retrospect, I realize that there could possibly be more to raising children than hugs and kisses and time outs.  But when I asked Jason recently what he thought of his upbringing, he told me it was great and he wouldn't have changed a thing.  Whenever we went out, he said, and when he saw other children having problems with their difficult parents, he would smile and walk right past them with his obedient mother in tow.  He had me right where he wanted me, under his control.  Have I mentioned that my son is really, really smart? He gets that from his dad.

Little Brown House with Yellow Shutters

For fifteen years, it was just Jason and me in the little brown house with yellow shutters.  When Jason was five, I bought the home on Old Mill Court to be closer to his babysitter, who lived three doors away.    Soon after we moved to the court, she quit, saying, "I can't do this anymore! It's waaay too hard!" Or something like that.

Raising Jason was hard.  I never intended to do it alone.  When I married his father, my plan was to have six kids, raise them all on the farm, and grow old surrounded by my large, loving family.  At thirty-five, I pictured myself at sixty with gray hair tied in a bun, wearing a loose-fitting Calico Prairie dress over my round, plump body, standing in our farmhouse kitchen baking chocolate chip cookies while three or four of my many grandbabies tugged at my dress.  "Nana, pick me up!"  "No, Nana, pick me up!" "I love you the most, Nana." "No, Nana.  I love you the most." Or something like that.

My plans fell apart the day the bank called, and what they had to say changed J.J.  Being a mother changed me.  We were different somehow, and not in a good way.  Farming was all J.J. knew, so when that was gone, he set about making a new path in a world not to his liking.  I was too preoccupied with the new love, love, love of my life to notice that our paths were separating and going in two different directions.  Then one day we looked at each other--two strangers--and said, "Where have you been?  I've just now noticed that you've been gone for a very long time."  Or something like that.

BACK TO THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE WITH YELLOW SHUTTERS

It wasn't a 160-acre farm with chickens, goats, sheep, horses, cows, hogs, and a dog named Laddie, but it was a home full of love and critters:  birds, fish, tarantulas, dogs, and cats.  Jason never got to grow up on the farm with five younger siblings, all fighting over who got to clean the hog pens, shovel horse poop, kill a chicken for Sunday dinner, milk the goats or spend sixteen hours a day working in the fields.  Instead he lived alone with a tiny old lady who lived in a little brown house with yellow shutters.  She colored over her gray hair, refused to wear frumpy prairie dresses, and shuttered at the thought of some rug rat calling her "Nana." Yep! Exactly like that.

The Sting That Binds

When thinking about a name for this post, I had several titles in mind.  "Love Hurts," or "The Masochist in Me," or "The Sadist in Him," or "I'm in a Bad Relationship...Oh, Well," but "The Sting That Binds" has a nice ring to it, so I'm sticking with the sting theme.

Something happened.  Who knows for certain what is was?  It was oh so long ago.  Maybe it was when I was five and playing doctor with the eight-year-old neighbor boy.  I was lying on the bed, stark naked with my life in the doctor's dirty little hands.  He said I needed a jambalaya vaccination or I would be dead within the hour, and then he left the room and never came back.  I waited and waited and waited.  Without him, my rescuer, I would die. Then Mother came into the room and screamed and screamed and fell on the floor and said, "OH, LORD, SAVE US FROM SIN! CAROL LOUISE, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" and I knew then that the doctor had misled me, I wasn't dying of jambalaya fever, I was going to hell, and I desperately loved the boy next door.

Three years later I was in love again.  Charles was his name and he was ten.  My family had moved into a large, turn-of-the-century house that had been converted into multi-family apartments at 16th and Broadway, and my love interest lived right next door in a big two-story home his family shared with no one.  One day, while Charles was riding his bicycle back and forth on the sidewalk, I decided to test his love for me (he didn't even like me; he told me that many times, but I thought he was in denial), so I sat down in the middle of the sidewalk with my back to him and waited for my Prince Charming to rescue me from myself.  He never attempted to slow down.  The impact took my breath away, and as I lay on the sidewalk gasping for air, he calmly rode away.  Through the pain, I still loved him.

When people ask, "How long have you been dependent upon men?" I say, "How long have you been wearing Depends?" and it shuts them right up.  Well, really, that's kind of personal, don't you think?  Besides, who wants to admit that they 1) wear Depends, and 2) are dependent upon anything?  Although, I do like those thin mini pads, even though I don't need them, except when I sneeze or laugh or cough.  Where was I?  It's my memory, you know.  Not so good anymore.

Oh, I remember now.  Something happened long ago.  But what? What caused me to become dependent upon men and the pain that bound me to them?  For the record, I was never dependent upon men.  I just wanted (needed) a man to call my very own while I lived the life of an independent woman.  I needed to know that, at the end of a very busy day, my ticket would be validated, and only my man could do that for me.  Validation was the one thing I could not do for myself, so...

I picked men who did not appreciate my worth, my value, my capacity to love them as they had never been loved before, and asked them to do the impossible: validate me.  I accepted the indifference, distance, secrets, lies, disrespect, infidelities, and sick machinations.  I choose men who could not or would not love me like I deserved to be loved.  Then...

 ...along came Tom.