Posts from — October 2009

My house is nothing if not an enormous communication system. It happened little by little but at this point I’m pretty sure that the U.S. government is tracking what goes on in our den.

My son sits at his computer and next to him is a phone on ’speaker,’ which is running a conference call between him and all his friends playing a particular computer game. It took me a while to figure out what was going on but eventually I realized that when I talk in my house, it’s being broadcast through his phone to no less than five other people’s homes, all of whom have their kids on speaker phone. So in essence, when I stand in the kitchen yelling, “Get your hideous dog out of here, he’s farting into the dishwasher,” that information is being simultaneously transmitted out to families across the city.

But to be fair, their daily household events are also being sent to us. I now realize that if I pay a little attention, I can hear all kinds of intimate things coming from other people’s homes. I know that Sebastian’s mother has a raging yeast infection which is why she has refused to have sex for the last three weeks. I know Zachary’s family is selling their vacation home because his dad lost his job, which according to Zachary’s mom is “Exactly what happens when you pour a half a bottle of scotch into your morning Starbucks you freaking LOSER” and it turns out that Eric’s mom found a very revealing photo of Matthew McConaughey in Eric’s dad’s sock drawer.

When you think about it, all this socializing is kind of good for an only child with a working mom. It’s like he always has friends over. At night, I come home to the sound of kids yelling and talking and phones ringing and texts dinging. It’s warm and fun and a good time is being had by all. “Hi everyone! I’m home.” No response. “I’m home from work you guys!” Nothing. So much communication and yet, no one has any desire to talk to me. “I suppose you’re all desperate to know what kind of day I had.” Sure they are. “Well I’ll tell you. My day was so good that I’m going to go slit my wrists in the shower.”

My son’s computer is also equipped with I.M. which means “Instant Message.” As best as I can tell, the guys use the I.M. function to talk behind each others back while they are on the conference call. Occasionally I’ve noticed that my son also speaks into a headset which it turns out is attached to “X-Box Live” where he is monitoring a game of Halo being played by people all over the country on our 50″ high def television. Oh, and also, about every six seconds, there is the sound of breaking glass. That’s his cell phone ringing, so yet another genius can inquire as to what’s ’sup at our house. If you do the math, the kid is now communicating with up to twelve people on four different devices at any given time while I continue to fuck up call-waiting.

Last night I finally got my son to bed and went downstairs to lock up. Everything was quiet. The t.v. was turned off, the dogs were asleep. I turned off the lights and glanced over to his computer. The phone was off the hook and the little red light was glowing. I leaned toward the phone slowly…

“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Who’s this?”
“This is Eric.”
“Aha. Well, Eric, it’s a school night. Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in the shower slitting your wrists?”

I guess someone was paying attention.

Oh! P.S. If you really listen, it turns out Sebastian’s mom does not have any kind of infection at all. She’s just taking a little break.

Rae

I wake up five hours before I have to go to work so I can get my son up, make sure he’s got everything he needs in his backpack, give him a hot breakfast, hug him, wish him a good day and send him to the bus stop. As best I can tell, this pisses him off

Is it possible to describe the way a person walks down a flight of stairs as “resentful?” Can one characterize the intake of toast as “outraged?”

I guess it’s not just the clean clothing and hot nutritious food that makes him so angry. I think he also has a problem with the way I relentlessly call out the time as the morning goes on.

“Six-thirty five! Twenty-five minutes ’til the bus!”
“Six-fifty! Ten minutes ’til the bus. That’s ten minutes!!”

And he lays there. Fully dressed on the couch under a throw, staring spellbound at recorded episodes of Family Guy that even I can quote verbatim. He has ignored his bagel and licked a piece of cantaloupe.

“Eat!! Eat!! Do you have your shoes on? You hair isn’t combed and you need to pack up your stuff. NI-IIINE MINUTES ‘TIL THE BUS!”

The blessed bus. I love the bus. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Instead of driving him all the way to school every morning, I now have time to walk the dogs, take a real shower, occasionally wash my hair. The school sent us a photo of the bus driver. I put her picture up in our kitchen and I thought about her all summer. Her name is Loretta and it’s because of her that I can exercise. I can straighten the house before I leave. I can be an actual adult working woman instead of a sponged-off raving maniac wearing a baseball cap and one earring.

“FOUR MINUTES!” I see some movement under the blanket. I have aggravated the situation to the point where he may even speak. He rises slowly and moves into the bathroom where he brushes his teeth and grows two inches.

“Time’s up!” I call out. And yet, there’s still so much more to do. He needs to find his shoes, do a little dance, pet the dogs, put on a shoe, pet the dogs, put on the other shoe, check out the t.v… oops, his sock is inside out.

Does anyone else remember that commercial where the businessman races into the mini-mart and asks for a fast cup of coffee and they cut to the back of the store where Juan Valdez stands at a coffee bush counting as he picks… “One coffeeeeee beeeeean….. two coffeeeee beeeeans….” That’s what this feels like to me.

Sweat is trickling down the side of my head. I give up the facade of him getting himself ready. I grab a kitchen towel and scrub it over his face. I throw his I.D. and his phone at him, place his backpack in his hands, physically turn him around and shove him out the front door.

He gets on the bus, and I stand at the front door waving. “Goodbye, Loretta… I love you… have a good day…!”

I am the oldest of six and my mother was born on Christmas.  There was no way to win.  If you spent time with her on her birthday, she cried because you didn’t like your new Christmas toys.  If you played with your toys, she ran in her room and slammed the door because clearly you thought  Christmas was more important than her birthday.

On a normal school day if you were to say, try to  read a book, she would yell upstairs that she “wishes she had time to just read.”   If you were a teenager and asked to go out to a party, she’d mutter,  ”So, your plan is to just leave me here  by myself with all these kids ?”  And when I sold my first T.V. show she wondered if  I’d,  ”finally  be able to get her a job.”

It’s possible I am predisposed to guilt.

The thing is,  I have been through literally decades of therapy.  I recognize guilt.  I  wave at it as it approaches.  Guilt is an old friend I think I’ve outgrown but because we have so much history together, can’t quite bring myself to cut off.  She shows up without any warning (no way Guilt is a guy), embraces me, and to tell the truth,  I hug back.   We feel so comfortable together, that I’m honestly glad to see her.  ”Oh, there you are!” I cry,   “You certainly got here in the nick of time. Listen to this!  I almost went out to dinner with some friends rather than rushing home to be shunned by my son.”

This is a very long way of saying I’m worried that I’m  passing this hard-wired guilt on.

In really ugly ways.

My son asks to have a couple friends sleep-over after I’ve worked until 11:00 the night before and I say, “Oh good.  Let’s make sure you have fun.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll just serve all of you several meals, clean up and lay in bed at two in the morning praying you’ll all go to bed soon.  I’m pretty sure the six hours of sleep I had last night should be enough to last me for the rest of the weekend.”   Or I will be trying to get out of the house to do something for myself and he will suddenly need to be taken to a school thing or require help on a project.  ”That’s okay, honey,” I say,  ” I didn’t really want a massage.  I don’t actually need new shoes.   It doesn’t matter.  Nothing I want to do ever matters.”

I don’t want to be this person.  This person is my mother.  I-am-not-my-mother.

Yet.

So one night after two (read: four) glasses of wine, I decided to help him through this flaw in my character . I sit him down and tell him all about the way I was brought up.  I explain my mother and what terrible guilt she inflicted on me and how sometimes I can’t help trying to make him feel guilty because it’s so ingrained in my blood.  Then I made the mistake of a lifetime.  I tell him that when I try to give him guilt, he should refuse to accept it.

Wa-aaay too much ammunition.

First of all, and this is key… no more wine before mother-son talks.  Secondly, I have to find a way to take this back because now it appears I have absolutely no leverage.  I used to be able to make him feel really terrible.  I can’t tell you how much I miss that.  Now he looks at me and asks, “Is that guilt?”  ”No!  No,” I cry. “Not guilt!  This is all medically documented.  My back is actually broken from working all day to support this house.  Raising you has literally taken years off my life.”

And now armed with his new information, he laughs at me.

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s a good thing.  Maybe I have kept my son from drowning in my bottomless pit of guilt.  Maybe I have broken the ugly pattern and saved generations of children from misery.

But I have screwed myself royally.  Don’t worry.  That doesn’t matter.  I wanted to be screwed.  Really.

Rae