playing cool

the 15 year old called me out. recently he admonished, "you have forgotten what it's like being a teenager." and he's right seeing how i am quite far from the angst and debilitating insecurity that comes with the onset of puberty.  

so i've been mulling over this admonishment. and the word angst has made its way into my vocabulary. i feel it. he feels it. we are on different sides, but we both feel it. 

i've been dredging up the past and calling all those ghosts forth to sit and spin and remind me of what it was like to have my father embarrass me. to recall how it hurt my mom when i corrected her grammar. i've winced at flashbacks to fashion choices and hair styles. but i have really pontificated the delicate balance between burgeoning independence and profound sense of dependence. i've been sitting in the stress that plagued me when i wondered about AP exams and ACT prep. how humiliating were my scores. the future seemed so unknown.

i try to remember that, but when i see my boy sitting with his friends unaware that i am watching. i want to know what he is laughing about. but i do not walk over to his table in the cafeteria. i pause. and let him have his space. his space. i try to play it cool (not my strong suit. have you met me?!)like i remember doing once upon a time when i was a teenager. playing it cool, but now i am the mother not the kid. it's hard, y'all. when you want to skip over to the cute boy (who happens to be your kid) and say, "heeeey, jaaaaack. what's going on?" only to have him turn around, shake his head and quietly ask, "what are you doing hhhheeeeere?" (that happened once. i learned my lesson. from hence forth, i keep my distance when i am at his school. but somehow he still manages to find out whenever i am there.) 

the other night we attended an awards ceremony for our first born. he was being recognized for many wonderful things. it was an exciting time for me his exuberant mother. he was incensed by me. the Mister was incensed by him. "i would have killed to have a mother like yours". i know he said this from a sincere place of love and not of one from flattery. but nevertheless as life would have it, the Mister didn't have a mother and our boy does. a mother with a camera. and a blog. and mother who wonders. a lot.

with the end of a school year upon us, we've been thinking a lot, the Mister and me about what our lives will look like in 3 short years when the oldest leaves high school and perhaps our home. the man i married can come off to some as being all business, but he is even more of softy than me when it comes to our lads. he often comments, "every day that i have all four of them under one roof is special." and i get it, but seeing how i have been with them almost every day of their entire lives, i feel a little less sentimental. i would be more prone to check the exhausted box.

so yesterday the freshman came home as he has everyday since the onset of his first year of high school, with a smile on his face. i met him at the door. how was your day? his response consistent as is his temperament, "good". i prodded, "what made it good?" silence. why did i need to know? isn't there some things that are just his? a mother doesn't have to crowd into rooms too small especially ones that are made for one.

there is so much truth that comes out of the mouths of babes. i think they are the last ones around who when asked will give you an honest answer. and i listen to my babes. and i try to hear them. really hear them. 

i'll be thinking on that today. along with trying to remember what it was like being a teenager-in hopes that i do not mortify the kid when i show up at his school. i am, after all, his mother.

xo,

gf

  

run, boy, run

hey boy.

this weekend your father, your brothers and i all stood on the sidelines cheering you on. we sat under a huge sky filled with the most amazing clouds that danced and darted around like something from a cartoon. we watched you awkwardly try to keep up with all the upper classmen. it was a sight. you running through that huge field with hundreds of boys from all over the state. muddy fields.

you don't particularly love running. but you are a dutiful son doing what your parents tell you to do. and this is something we thought would be a worthwhile venture for you. 

when i watch you run, although your pace is not fast, your spirit not yet competitive, i see a boy who will someday be a man. a man who will settle and find himself out on a path. a man who will hopefully go out for a run to work out his anger. a man who will choose to lace up his running shoes rather than light up a cigarette or down a glass of whiskey to take the edge off. 

sitting out in a field for 7 hours has its challenges

like latin and music and science and reading, exercise is another tool, i, your mother wish you to have in your belt as you begin to tinker with the world, your world. and even though i do not run or read latin or play an instrument, i want a bigger, broader, more lavish life for you and when i say lavish i do not mean the louis XIV variety.  i mean lavish like huge green fields filled with open spaces to run with a backdrop of hills and trees as far as the eye can see with a sky overhead that is so expansive you wonder how you never noticed it before. that is what i wish for you. 

fan club

so saturday, i, your mother sat on a tarp looking around at hundreds of people who were mostly runners. all of our faces were chapped by the sun and the wind. and i thought "how did we get here? our boy is in high school!" i watched your team mates tolerate your younger brothers. i held my breath as i used a port-a-potty. and i lost my voice from cheering you on, my faithful, dutiful, adventurous first born. i can only hope you continue on this path that we have set before you. and maybe someday you will choose to run.

even when no one is making you. even when you can't hear people cheering you on.

xo,

gf

day 11: merry kissmas

yesterday the littlest said, "mom, if someone got married on christmas, we could say 'merry kissmas'." it made me think of a couple who got married close to christmas several years ago.

dear me. this is one from the vault.

leigh ann and i met in high school when we were in the same science class. she was smart enough to take a class in a grade above. i was just happy to have mr. steed, a resolutely docile science teacher with the patience of job. leigh ann and i hit it off and became fast friends sharing biology notes and weekend adventures that usually involved a movie with a package of skittles. she was best friends with me and the Mister. when he decided to propose, leigh ann helped. she wrapped him in a box and drove away leaving him on my mother's front porch. and then she phoned to tell me to go outside. it seems trite to say, but i remember that phone call as clear as if it were yesterday. when someone calls you at 2 am, it's memorable. and upon our engagement, i remember overhearing her say, "i don't know if i should be a groomsman or a bridesmaid". she settled on wearing a dress and being a bridesmaid.

this smart, small town girl went on to pharmacy school and lived away from our hometown for many years. but something brought her back. and being back was what led her to meet her future family.

he was a precious widower with a darling daughter. an attorney with stalwart integrity who once chased down a petty criminal and drove him to the police station unbeknownst to this peeping tom. 

as stepmothers go, i do not know of any good ones. it's been my experience that they are all pretty much like the evil ones from the fairy tales. and i've even known one or two who make the ones in fairy tales look tame. but leigh ann is the exception. and let's just go ahead and cut the word stepmother out of the conversation while we are at it. it really isn't a fitting title for this woman who is the only mother a young girl ever really knew.

the couple who married shortly after christmas many, many years ago with a daughter as the flower girl added 3 more little girls to the mix shortly thereafter. we laugh. she has 4 girls. i have 4 boys. 

us all these years later

leigh ann reminds me that sometimes the best parts of life are the ones that come together through incredible circumstances. we cannot always celebrate tragedy. nor should we. but when tragedy gives way to joy, well that is a fairy tale worth believing because it's true, hard, but true.

happy 12th anniversary, dale and lu. we love you lots.

xo,

gf