Twenty years ago today, this is what my son wanted Santa to put in his stocking. So it shouldn’t have been a shock to me when he became a teenager, that, not only would his favorite scent be Sulfur, but his bedroom window would be the best place to shoot roman candles and bottle rockets. At least, according to him.
And in case you’re wondering, Santa did NOT come through with his last minute request. It helps when you sleep with Santa.
Oh the joys of parenting boys!
In my last post I told you how much I missed my kids. Nothing’s changed, but I wanted to share a few tips with you so that you wouldn’t have to experience 1,500 miles of distance between you and your children like I have to.
First of all, I always told my kids that they could go anywhere. I told them not to limit their college selections based on close proximity to home but rather to use that time to go out and see the world.
What was I thinking?
When Stephen was a senior in high school we took him to Los Angeles and it was during that trip that he decided he wanted to live on the beach and go to college at UCLA. Courtney’s junior year we took a trip to New York and that’s all it took to convince her that she was destined to attend New York University. What were we thinking?
The summer of 2006 was horrible. Courtney graduated from high school and was headed to NYU and Stephen, after 2 years at the University of Oklahoma, had been accepted at UCLA. In August, we rented a U-Haul and drove Stephen’s belongings to California, then boarded a plane to New York to get Courtney situated in the Big Apple.
In a one week time frame, my kids were bi-coastal.
I cried the ugly cry all the way home from New York. Then I spent several months drowning my sorrows with double stuffed Oreos.
It was awful. I gained 30 pounds and slept with my cell phone in case they called.
I thought that raising my kids to think for themselves was the right thing to do. I figured that the worst that could happen would be that they would vote for a Democrat. Boy was I wrong.
Now Stephen is working and living in Houston, and in a few months he will be transferring to Denver. Courtney has decided that pursuing a career in screenwriting will mean that she will move to Canada after she graduates.
If you don’t want to end up like me, with an empty nest, here are my suggestions:
1. Never take your kids to vacation spots that are also college towns.
2. Aside from the geography that they study in 8th grade, don’t tell them that life exists outside a 50 mile radius.
3. When they question the existence of cities like New York City or Los Angeles, LIE. Tell them those aren’t real places, just Hollywood fantasy.
4. Most importantly, lay on the guilt. Tell them how sad you will be if they move away. And,
5. If all else fails, bribe them. Or lock them in their rooms, whichever comes easier.
I am proud of my kids. I live my life vicariously through them. Stephen spends every third or fourth weekend in Mexico or Italy vacationing. Courtney is being mentored by the best writers and moguls in the media world. Stephen makes more money than his dad does and Courtney is becoming a very sought-after entertainment graphic designer.
I don’t know whether to be jealous of them or excited that when they put us out to pasture, they’ll be able to afford designer Mu Mu’s for me and a room with a view for their dad.
It was April the last time I saw my beautiful Courtney, and my Stephen is in Houston. While I’ll get to see Courtney at Thanksgiving in New York, it will most likely be Christmas before I see my son.
I miss my kids. And it’s my fault.
When I was raising my kids I used to tell them that after high school they could go anywhere. That was the time for them to see the world – there’s more to this life than Oklahoma. I love the Sooner state, but I wanted them to have a choice – to see what was out there and then make the choice as to where they wanted to live. If all else failed, they could always come home.
I admit, I was trying a little reverse psychology, and it didn’t work. I thought if I told them to go, they would choose to stay. I was wrong.
And now, as the holidays approach, I start getting sad.
That’s to be expected. But I’ve also reached a place in my life where my kids are happy and they don’t really need me as much as they used to. Whereas before I would get at LEAST one call a day from Courtney and a call or two a week from Stephen, now I’m lucky if Stephen has time for me once a month and Courtney does good to have time for me once a week.
I understand that they are living the lives I raised them to live, but I didn’t know it would hurt so much. I LIKE my kids, I LOVE my kids, and I MISS my kids. I spent 25 years being their mom, and now, they don’t need me.
So I’m baking. I’m sending them all the goodies that they can’t get anywhere else. I’m tempting them, enticing them, bribing them – whatever it takes – to remind them that there’s no place like home. Caramel popcorn, fudge, party mix and puppy chow – all their favorites.
If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change anything. I know they’re living the lives they were intended to live. But I would suggest to other moms out there – make home the place that nothing can compete with.
Or, just drill it into their little minds that Mom always comes first. Period.
Guilt works too. That’s my next approach.
Stupid empty nest…
Until that moment, I never knew how much a mother could love her child. My first child was but hours old, and the power of love and the urge to protect him forever set in immediately. The thoughts that entered my mind about my son were quickly followed by an immense outrage. It was the first time I had felt this rage, and I was appalled by it. My rage was directed at the mother who didn’t want her child, the mother who would rather have alcohol than her child, who would rather have a man’s attention, the mother who used her child as a bargaining tool. That mother was my own.
1972
Chapter One
Life as I knew it would never be the same again after that morning that Momma left me. Hearing the crunch of the gravel as the car pulled away would become a sound that caused my heart to race and a lump to form in the back of my throat. I wanted to run after her like a child who had gone mad and scream and cry and beg her to take me with her. I was like a child gone mad; the insanity of it all was more than I could bear.
A million thoughts were running through my 9-year-old mind. Surely Momma hadn’t left me there! Maybe Momma had forgotten something and had to go back to Grandma’s. Perhaps she had forgotten me; after all, I had been sitting quietly for a very long time. I refused to believe what my mind already knew but my heart wouldn’t accept.
And Momma had been acting strangely today, as if she hadn’t gotten enough sleep. What if she had a wreck? It had been all I could do to help her steer the car on the way to church. She had borrowed Grandma’s car, and Grandma had told her “drive carefully and no smoking in the car” as we were leaving. But it didn’t seem like she was being very careful at all. The car kept slowing down and veering off the road and into the ditch, and even though I couldn’t see over the dashboard, I knew to turn the wheel the other way. I was trying to get Momma’s attention so she would wake up and steer the car on her own. Momma’s eyes kept closing and getting stuck halfway between open and shut, and her head wouldn’t stay upright, her neck seeming to have no muscles in it to hold it. Momma held her head up long enough to light a cigarette, yelling at me to “hold the wheel!” not realizing I was already holding it.
Softening a little, Momma looked at me, “Talk to me, honey, help keep Momma awake.”
She reached down and turned the radio volume up, as if that would give her the boost she needed to hold her eyes open. “Alone Again, Naturally” was playing on the car’s AM radio, which only made Momma start to cry.
“Stupid song,” she complained, fumbling in her purse for a tissue, pulling out a very crumbled, obviously used one, “why can’t they play the Carpenters?”
Momma had always loved the Carpenters, but lately she seemed to play their recording of Good-bye to Love over and over, which annoyed me greatly, especially since the album had a small scratch right where Karen Carpenter said ‘good-bye’ making her say ‘gggooodgggooodbye’ instead.
Suddenly Momma looked like she was going to pass out, and I said nothing, afraid that maybe we wouldn’t make it to church in one piece. If Momma was so sick, why was she bringing her to church at all, and why weren’t they going with Grandma to the old people’s church in town like we always did? And why was she carrying that old suitcase with her? The blue Samsonite only closed on one side, and I noticed that my Sunday pink panties were sticking out the other side. I had looked for my Sundays while I was getting dressed for church and couldn’t find them, and Momma had seemed in such a hurry that I gave up and wore the plain white. I always wore the right panties on the right days, not like Kari Robinson, who had to wear her Monday and Thursdays all week, since Kari’s momma had 4 other girls, and they had to share the packaged 7 days of panties amongst each other.
Momma always insisted on clean panties, since you never know when you might have an automobile accident and someone would see your panties. I wasn’t planning on being in an accident any time soon, but should the occasion occur and I was to die tragically, at least people would know that I had the sense to know my days of the week.
“Poor little thing,” they would say, standing over my lifeless broken body, “but at least she’s wearing her Tuesdays.”
The parking lot was empty except for a dusty red Ford Falcon. Grandpa Joe had one just like it, except his was blue. The church was a weathered white building, with a tall pointed steeple sticking out of its pointed roof. It reminded me of those churches you always see on Christmas cards, only without the snow. As we got out of the car and walked up to the church, I could hear a high-pitched shrill voice singing, or rather, shrieking over the hum of the organ. I recognized the song as one of the hymns we sang at the church Momma and Daddy and I used to go to. But that was before. Momma and I didn’t go to church anymore. She said the church was full of hypocrites, but I didn’t know exactly what a hypocrite was, so I just listened and nodded like I agreed with her.
As we opened the double doors at the front of the building, the singing stopped, and the lady who had been the apparent source of the noise jumped up from the bench and headed toward us. As the lady made her way toward Momma and me, I noticed that she wasn’t wearing any shoes, but instead was wearing pink fluffy bedroom slippers. The closer she got I couldn’t help but stare. Her hair was piled so high on her head that I was almost afraid she would fall over if she didn’t balance it just right. She was wearing lipstick that looked to be the same color of the orange crayon I had at home in my Crayola box, and her eyes were smothered with bright blue eye shadow, lined in black, and topped off with heavy black eyelashes. She reminded me of those clowns I had seen at the Barnum and Bailey circus last year.
If Momma was good at anything, she knew how to put on makeup and look pretty. Momma had blonde hair, dishwater blonde as she called it, and big blue eyes. She wore her hair like Marilyn Monroe, poofy on top and flipped out on the ends. She wore blue eye shadow, but hers was soft and lightly applied. Never would Momma have ever worn orange lipstick! Frosted pink was her color. And she always dressed real nice, like those ladies in the magazines she bought at the dime store.
“I need to see the Pastor” Momma told her before organ lady had a chance to speak. Momma’s voice sounded shaky, but I thought it was because Momma had been so sleepy on the way to church. But underneath her voice was a sense of urgency that I didn’t recognize at the time.
“Well, Pastor Hallett is studying right now, could I help you?” the organ lady said, reaching for Momma’s arm, as if she wanted us to leave.
“No, I won’t be a bother; I just need to see him for a minute – alone” Momma said, her voice sounding louder than before, but still shaky, “just a minute if he wouldn’t mind.”
The orange lipstick organ lady turned motioned for us to follow. As she padded toward the door in the back of the sanctuary, she glanced back at me and smiled. When she opened the door to the pastor’s office, all I could see was his hair looming over the sports section of the Sunday newspaper. He folded one side of the paper so he could look at us, peering at us over the top of his glasses, which were pushed down low on his nose. That’s when I saw it. His hair that had stood up over the top of the paper was really a wig, a toupee. The top part of THE HAIR was cold black, and it was thick, and it had been combed back but not flat, so that it stood a good two inches off the top of his head. The underneath hair, which seemed to have a mind of it’s own, was sticking out all over, and had a greenish tint to it’s natural gray color. Still, he seemed to have a granddad face, the kind that kids are drawn to.
“Yes?” he asked, looking questioningly at the orange lipstick organ lady.
“This woman asked to see you alone, Pastor,” she said, “She just needs a minute.”
At that the Pastor looked from me to my mother, and as the recognition of her reached his brain, he reached for her hand.
“Sandi, how are you?” he asked, as the door between us closed.
I was awakened by the sound of the pastor’s office door closing. I must have fallen asleep waiting for her to come out. When she walked out of his office, she had black streaks running down her face from the Maybelline mascara that she wore. She didn’t even look at me, she just looked past me, and her eyes had a look to them that scared me.
She took long steps, quick steps toward the same doors we had come in, and I sat still for a minute, trying to figure out what she was doing. She opened the door, and paused a minute, almost like she didn’t have the strength to walk out. But her hesitation only lasted a few seconds before she walked out, closing the door behind her. I jumped up from the pew I had been resting on and ran toward the door, thinking she must have forgotten me, but just as I opened that door, the pastor grabbed me, stopping me from following her. I began to flail out against him, trying to get away, trying to get to Momma, but his strength held me close. Panic set in as I realized she was leaving me there, leaving me with the orange lipstick organ lady and the pastor with the rug on his head. I tried to cry, to scream, to make my mouth move, my legs run, but nothing came out and my legs were like rubber.
That’s all I remember. Everything else was a blur. The mind has a way of helping us forget the most painful memories. The next thing I remember is waking up in a brown lazy boy recliner with slobber dripping down my chin, dried slobber on my cheek where I had been sleeping. It was the cold wetness of the slobber that had awakened me. It was getting dark outside, and as I tried to focus on the events that brought me to this strange place, I knew instinctively that Momma had left me, and wasn’t coming back.
Dear Dad,
I just wanted you to know that the things you taught me and the example you set for me made me the woman, wife, and mother that I am today. In spite of all the times I slammed my door, argued with you, and pouted when I got mad – I was listening. At least most of the time.
You taught me how to remove stitches when I was 10 – who needs a doctor when you can do it yourself?
You taught me that coconut cream pie and a Coke is the REAL breakfast of champions
You taught me that Christmas trees don’t have to be purchased – there are plenty available off the side of the road, over the fence and through the woods – you just have to bring your own saw and HURRY!
You taught me that “IT’S NOT TO REASON WHY, IT’S TO DO OR DIE”
You taught me how to drive a stick shift – or, rather, you frowned and yelled a lot and I cried – but I learned and I’m the one who taught my kids
You taught me that when you disciplined me it was hurting you worse than it was hurting me – hmmm, still not quite sure about that one
You taught me not to do as you DID, but to do as you SAID – I’ve used that one a few times myself
You never swore, except to Pete, whoever that was
And most importantly, you continue to teach me that I can count on you and you will always, always be there for me.
That was proven first in 1972 when our life became just the two of us. I can never thank you enough for taking on the responsibility of raising a 9-year-old me. That was not easy, I’m certain.
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.” Sigmund Freud
Freud was right, but not just in childhood, forever.
Love,
Your daughter
This is Me 