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Picking up my basket
Last couple of days have been kitten-on-crack crazy!
To put it plainly, I dropped my basket. (If you’ve read Divine Secrets of the Ya–Ya Sisterhood you know what I mean by that).
The rift between my son and I, over the most ridiculous matter – fed itself with silence and grew. And grew. And grew.
Yesterday morning had me inelegantly dropping a toaster strudel and it’s plate onto his bed (I’m SO mature) and lead to him leaving without a hug or a goodbye.
So I spent yesterday at work in a daze. Physically ill. A little crying jag at my desk.
My last blog post is staying. It’s exactly how I felt at the time. Drama Queen sash please. And a little crown too?
This parenting stuff is HARD! I would literally give my life for this human that has the ability to mortally wound me with one cutting look.
Bonkers. Teddy Bonkers!
I came home to a boy behind closed-door again. I was so … sad. I crossed the line in the sand (his threshold) and went in.
I’ll spare you and my son all the in-between bits – but at one point I was told (well, technically he wasn’t talking to me, so I was IM’d) the sentence that I had made it almost 18 years without hearing. “I’ll move out as soon as I can”.
Now, I don’t want to stereotype, but I imagine most parents upon hearing that would chuckle to themselves and wish their offspring ‘good luck’, while knowing deep down their birds were not going to actually leap from the nest.
Not me.
Nope.
That sentence shot through me like a bullet. My gut suddenly had a brick placed in it. My eyes welled up and I furiously typed back in response to my sons words. (Yeah, we’ve really come to that. Typing to each other).
Fast forward to him cautiously coming out of his room after I fell apart and told him he has never ever, ever been told he had to move out – (man did he play me like a fiddle xbox!) and we mended our bridge.
I hugged him tight – tears streaming down my face, and I’m gulping air like … I’m not sure what gulps air?? You get the picture. As I sobbed “don’t SAY that – don’t ever SAY that” it dawned on me I was wound around his little finger tighter than unbreakable thread. (It’s apparent to me now that I’m going to need to buy a house … with a basement for my 40-year-old. Because whether he wants to take flight or not – I’m clearly not up to it).
The relief at the disappearance of the tension in the air was palpable.
We both joked and laughed. Then his joking got a little cocky. Then a little rude … and I looked at my almost-a-man boy and asked, with wet cheeks and racoon eyes:
“I thought the flu was going around, not asshole?”
A giant is coming!
I slept until 9:30 this morning. It was delightful. I do vaguely remember being roused from sleep to let Butters out, but I blissfully found my way back to bed and back to sleep.
It’s my last full day off. Tomorrow the alarm will sound and I’ll be off to my Sunday morning job. I’m so grateful for it. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not already looking at the clock like it’s an hour-glass.
I do that. I live this juxtaposition of soaking in every moment while a countdown is happening in my head.
I’m currently counting down until my son returns from picking up his friend, who is a giant. When he’s here, in our little shoe box, the living room is impossibly dwarfed even further to the size of a matchbox.
He’s a good kid. (I suppose he’s not a ‘kid’ really – he turned 18 and graduated from High School last year). Nic has a knack (say that 10 times fast) of attracting ‘good kids’. What a blessing.
But I’m sitting here typing and … tangent. Hold on. I heard somewhere if you use ‘but’ in a sentence, you’re not saying what you really want to say. But I couldn’t very well just put a post up that says ‘I’m losing my living room’ could I?
Okay.
But I’m sitting here typing and the hour-glass is almost out of sand on my vacation time with my living room. They’ll be hooking up Xboxes – my little 3 foot Christmas tree (yes, I already put it up) will be scooted off somewhere to make room for his friends laptop – or monitor or whatever it is.
I’ll be like a jury member on a high-profile case – sequestered to my room with a hall pass to the kitchen.
And that’s okay.
I’ll clean around them and maybe paint this afternoon. I’ll go to the market and pick some things they’ll smile about when I unpack them from the grocery bags.
I’m so grateful. Grateful that my son chooses to be here. That his friends like to be here. Grateful that the electricity bill is paid so they can plug their consoles in. Grateful that I can go to the store and bring food back.
UPDATE:
See what happens when I assume? They got creative with the monitor and the little tree issue.
And, now they’re all settled in. Time for me to run errands 😉
Debauchery Soup 