Debussy and Baseball

Backstory: Sam, a baseball guy, is not a classical music fan. I, a classical music lover, struggle to understand his game.  It wouldn't appear that we have much in common. 

Except that he is my huge fan, and I am his.  

In honor of his 21st birthday, I am posting one of my favorite "Sam" stories.  Happy birthday, Sam. Thank you for teaching me one of the biggest rules for a successful life:  You have to be at bat to score.

From 2011

I listen to classical music in the car which, Sam says, makes his ears bleed. It’s kind of a dance. We get in the car. I turn on "Classical New England". Sam groans and changes the station. I hear “Ridin’ Solo,” and change the station again. Then I make a ridiculous, fictional statement about a pop celebrity, preferably a rap star.

“Did you know that Little Wayne –”

“Lil.”

“Did you know that Little Wayne and the one he went to jail with, the one with a T in his name. Mr. T – "

“T.I. And they didn't go to jail together."

“Did you know they both grew up listening to classical music?”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s true. I read it on Rhapsody. And did you know that Lady Gaga went to medical school?”

“That’s not true.”

“You’re right. She went to Julliard.”

He changes the station to JYY and looks out the window, and I turn the station back to classical and tell him if he listened for just two minutes he’d be a fan, and he tells me you can’t do that because with a classical music station, there’s so much silence before and after the song, when nobody says or does anything, you don’t even know if the radio is on which is why it makes his ears bleed and he switches the station to 94.1 where they play California Gurls once every twenty-five minutes. I ask a question like, “Do they spell Girls with a “u” because of copyright issues with the Beach Boys?” He looks at me as though he's not sure we know each other. 

And yet, if he dominates the radio in the car, he’s made no attempt to change the station in the house, where classical music plays 24/7. 

At dinner one night, he looked up and said, “I like this one. What is it?”

“Claire de Lune by Debussy,” I said.

He nodded thoughtfully, then told me something about baseball which I understood after he drew diagrams on the back of many envelopes.

Now that Sam has a license and a vehicle, we’re rarely in the car together and I can listen to as much classical music as I want. Every so often, I feel the tug that comes with knowing my last child is home for only a year plus. When that happens, I scan the radio stations or turn to a disc Sam left behind, select one of his favorites, and listen until the light changes.

Maybe someday, a year and change from now, when he’s far away, Sam will feel a similar kind of tug and if he’s alone, maybe he’ll listen to a classical music station until the light changes and if he’s lucky, maybe he’ll hear Clair de Lune and remember that it’s Debussy. 

Probably he won’t remember the Debussy part. But maybe, soon after this happens, he’ll call home to talk about baseball.

And I will take notes, and remember all I can.

Conversations with your college freshmen that matter before they leave, and long after they've gone.

Me, with my unexpected pleasure of parenting

A while back, I was asked by Grown and Flown, a highly regarded parenting blog, to take part in a slideshow by expressing an unexpected pleasure of parenting. Mine was this:

I have loved and accepted my children every day of their lives. But who they have become on their own are four people I would love if I met them today.

More recently, I posted a piece about visiting our son at college. The afternoon we arrived, he told us he'd invited a "bunch of guys" over to meet us and suggested we come by at around ten for a few rounds of beer pong, then leave before the actual party started later. Ha ha.

We would use water, he added graciously.  "You don't have to actually drink beer."

It did not cross my mind to be horrified by the prospect of college juniors and seniors drinking beer at a party. It did cross my mind that we were being invited to glimpse the world he lives in now and who he is becoming.

The post was appreciated by many people who have kids in college, but not by everyone. One  reader suggested I might have used the moment as a jumping off point to talk about "drinking responsibly."

Well, that ship has sailed, but point taken. College drinking makes parents nervous, especially those about to launch first freshmen. 

Because I actually take the well being of college students (and their parents) very seriously, I will pass along a few "worked for me" tips in hopes that your own talk about drinking responsibly won't feel like one you're having with yourself.

From my own files of "wish I had," and "glad I did":

Dial down your fear and ASK.

We have launched four children, which means our first teenager, poor thing, got me at the ground floor of the learning curve where the motive for everything was to make sure nothing bad ever happened to our children. Here is where good discussions start with the words, "I just want to tell you a few things" and promptly die.

When our last child was getting ready for college, our conversations were more Q's from me, and A's from him. I had seen him affect his own success and failure in high school and knew he liked driving his own bus. We covered the gamut of college temptations but not without striking a deal: I could ask him anything. He would be honest. I could ask follow-ups. He would explain. I could not "freak out" over anything.

   

Be real.

Our kids stay on the rails in high school because they have seen more of their choices than they've told us about and have selected carefully.

The temptation to characterize the behavior that will surround our kids at college as foolish or stupid or beneath them is well-intentioned but guilt-producing. Teens – good ones – fall in love and have sex. Teens – good ones – get together at the beach and get drunk. Some become pregnant. Some become substance-addicted. Most do neither. Acknowledging that destructive behaviors are as much a choice of smart people as productive ones is honest. It is not giving them permission to be one of those bad teens at the beach.

Recognize who they already are 

By the time all of our kids left for school our discussions about drugs, birth control, and safety on the street were no longer about dire consequences. They were "if and when" conversations of how our kids might react in difficult situations, in context with who they were.

What might they do with the opportunities to cut loose once they didn't have to face parents in the kitchen the end of the night? What might they do to feel wanted and welcome instead of lonely and unsure? Could we agree on how they would stay safe? Would they tell me if they thought they were in trouble?" 

If early conversations are candid, they'll open the door to honest  dialog about how our kids' lives are really challenging them, so that we are not left searching their tone of voice or laugh for clues.

Do not overlook the bystander talk 

Thomas Vander Ven is the author of "Getting Wasted," which explores not if, but why kids drink to excess in college. In his interview with Salon.com, he discusses the VERY important  role of "bystander," which  any college student should be prepared to assume.

A discussion with college freshmen about how they must look out for others is as important as those about how they will govern themselves. Not every female who drinks at a party will become a sexual victim. Not every male will become an alcoholic. But every college kid at a party is a bystander, and our kids should know when to intervene, to call 911 if someone is dangerously high, to notice when someone is alone and too drunk at a party. High school kids don't turn in their friends – let the parents deal with that – but in college, "telling" could save a life. 

Say that.

Recognize who they have become.

We know our new freshmen, and they know themselves, in context with a life that will change completely come fall. They will abandon some behaviors, experiment with others, and probably develop a hard-won appreciation for moderation.

As Vander Ven points out, when they're in their careers, and working late all the time, and coming home exhausted, they're probably not going to get together in someone's room to get hammered.

Those who are still on the rails three years after leaving home are there because they've continued to assess their choices in the quiet of their own minds. They have earned their own respect. And self-respect is delicious and habit-forming.

Never turn down an invitation to visit their world.
Accept. If you are lucky enough to have been invited to a water-pong party, go. You may be impressed to discover that your child and his friends have become their own family with assignments for clean-up duty, and house rules about how to host others safely and behave themselves. 

If you are, say so. It means a lot to them, and is the best report card you can hope for.

When college breaks up the boys

Drew and Sam : the boys as the boys

 If you have raised boys, and will see one of them off to college in the fall,  you may worry as I did about what the separation will do to their close relationship. 

When Drew left for college, Sam was not yet a teenager. He didn't count the days until his brother's first break.  He kept a chart on the back of his door and crossed off the days. 

It was after Drew had been out of the house for five years that I understood the enduring strength of their brother relationship. 

Below is a post I wrote that year about the closeness that was not lost in the separation, but enriched by the days that came before.

September 6, 2011

From the kitchen window, I’m watching Drew on the lawn, chipping golf balls into the air toward his target which is the outstretched hand of Sam, who leaps from the shallow end of the pool and into the air like a caffeinated retriever. There is heckling and laughing when he misses, and then catches the little ball. Despite the chance that this ad-hoc game could end with a head injury and a trip to the ER, for now, it has my appreciation.

On paper, Drew the golfer, and Sam the baseball player, have four things in common which are their parents and siblings. Drew is organized, pays his bills on time, and runs his life like a business. Sam is spontaneous, has not met a deadline he can’t extend, and handles all his responsibilities on the same day of the week after he is sure that everyone he knows is busy. They are seven years apart, at different stages of life, with a respective circle of friends who wouldn’t necessarily click. On paper, there is no reason they’d want to spend time together, and yet…

It is a week later and a tropical storm has left us without power. Nobody is happy but for Sam and Drew, who have unearthed a twelve-year-old video game called “Backyard Baseball” and are playing it in Sam’s dark room on a battery-charged computer. There is much mocking of the nostalgic, antiquated game that once captivated them. I crack the door and peer inside and they wave at me. It looks like they are sitting in a mitten. Both are wearing baseball hats.

As people, they affect others differently. People talk to Drew who is by trade as well as by nature, a careful listener and talented writer. People listen to Sam who has been a compelling and persuasive speaker for all but six months of his seventeen years. And yet...

After a while the power is back on and the storm has calmed. The boys appear dressed and showered and announce that they are going to check the level of the river. They haven’t a clue what they’re checking, what to compare it to, and I’m sure they may not even know where the river is, they just think it will be fun to be “storm trackers.”

Here is the something.

Fun happens when we're not trying to have it, I think, a feeling more than a thing we actually do. It can make you glad to be alive, glad to be who you are or glad about who you're with. And though I think fun as a feeling is hard to replicate only by recreating an activity, I believe the soul keeps track of our potential to feel it again. 

In the way they related to each other, our boys discovered their appetite for fun. Despite the distance that followed, they never lost it.

One day, Sam and Drew will have spouses and children and schedule issues that make it hard to get together unless the serious one is willing to hop a flight at the last minute or the less-serious one is willing to plan in advance. They will need to remember the feeling of fun to make it work. They will.

Life says, “Here’s my price,” and we decide: we can afford it or we can’t. My belief, as their mother and ride to the ER, is that they will have absorbed each other’s company and counsel enough to remember these days of fun clearly. Enough at least to make a healthy down payment on that asking price.

 

Sam and Drew at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
September 20, 2013

Hit Submit

Foreword:  In the crazy October days leading up to the college-bound student's early decision application deadline, there is little time to think about what lies ahead. That's what November is for.  

I've reposted our experience, because it's as true today as it was two years ago:  October is about the trip to the post office. November is about everything else.

Our son, Sam, has applied early decision to Elon. “We” have not applied early decision to Elon, as I recently heard myself say, like couples who say, "we're pregnant."

Sam has applied early decision to Elon. We haven’t.

But we’re hoping we get in.

The good thing about the abbreviated, early decision application timeline – a semi-frantic period that squeezes September and swallows October whole, and requires the ED applicant to gather transcripts, sit for the last SAT, line up letters of recommendation and craft the most significant experience of their seventeen years into (all hail) The Essay – is that there is little time to think about what comes next, which is November. 

That is not what October is for.

  

October is about getting ready for college while the month passes at double the speed of any other, until the only thing left to do is hit “submit” and heave a huge sigh of relief.  It is not about shorter grocery lists, or empty laundry hampers, or the day ten months from now, when you will hug your ED applicant goodbye, go to the airport, and sit at the gate where you will point to the child of stranger-parents and say, "Sure, now they're having tantrums and spilling juice on my suitcase, but blink and you'll be dropping them off at college."

No, October is about nagging and follow through, setting up tutors, waiting for scores, reading and editing the resume. It is about saying at least once a week, “If I have to bug you to (tedious task here), what will happen when I’m not there to bug you?” as if the ED Applicant will lose your contact information right after you hug him goodbye and go to the airport, where a teenager sitting next to you will look so much like your ED applicant, you'll want to give him money for lunch and ask him if he’s okay on gas. 

October gets you ready for college.

November gets you ready for the airport. 

November is for musing over the path that has led you here, where you have learned that, flawed as it turns out you each are, you are perfect in the roles you occupy for each other. 

November is for the moments when, on your own, in the breezy dark, you look into the sky and say to God, “If you keep him safe next year, I will never, ever drive in the left lane again.”  

November is for letting your eyes rest on your ED applicant’s face a little longer than necessary, maybe even to the point where he says, “What? What’s wrong? What are you doing? Is there something on my face?” while you smile and say, “Of course not, you’re wonderful,” and finish memorizing the moment. 

November is for making very sure that the next nine months are like the ones before you met your ED applicant- joyful and not stressful, full of trepidation and anticipation, both. November is for making sure that every conversation, even the candid, not-so-nice ones, are valued because they all reflect the honesty of your relationship.

  

“So, tonight, we hit submit,” I said to Sam over lunch at Uno’s recently.

He looked startled.

“It’s done,” I said.

“I should look at it one more time,” he said.

“You can if you want.”

“There might be something missing,” he said.

“There’s nothing missing,” I said.

There was a beat. A blink.

“You’re ready,” I said.

He nodded. “You’re right,” he said, “I am.”

There was a time last year when I felt, but tried not to show, impatience with parents who anticipated the absence of their college-bound children with melancholy. I almost said, but didn’t, how unfair it is to complicate a teenager’s already mixed feelings about separating with worry over how their parents are handling it.  

Something stopped me from being that snarky, maybe it was God (who has pulled me back to the curb more than once) but more likely, it had something to do with Octobers past, and Novembers future and what happens to us in airports. 

We’re ready. 

Why it was easier to separate from college-bound daughters than sons

My group. All done with me, but not really.

Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Bernice, whose last two children, fraternal twins, will leave for college in a week. We talked about the difference in how we separate from girls and boys.  To us, maybe to you, there is one.

Last year, after Sam left for his freshman year at Elon, I grappled with the same realization I had when our oldest son left and it was this: I would never again, know him as well as I did living with him every day.

Without the adhesive of daily interaction,  and without the intuitive advantages of shared gender, I would know him less and less. Our communication, always real and spontaneous, might become  something to locate now, like a pulse. Without those  daily glimpses into who he was becoming, I would have to understand him again from a distance.

But how?

If Sam and I spoke a single cross word to each other last August as the weeks closed in on his departure, I wouldn't be able to describe the exchange. I wanted the shortening period with him at home to be harmonious, and it was.  

In contrast, when our daughters were preparing to leave for college a few years ago, despite our close relationships, prickly tension developed between us in early August and didn't abate until after the drop off. Arguments were frequent and pointless, conversations were awkward, doors were closed - hard.  They separated the only way they knew how, which was to force the break. And they did us both a favor.

But, it was just that. Separation.

As my friend and I discussed,  it's easier to separate from a daughter, but not because we aren't close. It's easier because we are both women.  

In the work of getting daughters ready for the world, we're not just supportive, we're coaches. We've played this game.  We've done the girl's life already,  we can commiserate with the myriad emotions of a growing up a girl.

Unique as the events of their lives are to them - getting their ears pierced, finding a first friend, falling in love, getting a job, being accepted at their target college, being accepted everywhere - they are not strange or unfamiliar to us.  They are things we've done, and imagined them doing since the days of baby teeth and first haircuts. Even if we're not alike, we have gender in common. We know our daughters like our own voices.

We can relate to their journey, while we can only observe a boy's. We work harder to align our expectations with who she is and not who we were. We suppress judgement as she does things her way, not ours. We contain the urge to warn her away from things that she must encounter to learn who she is. We allow her time that we ourselves needed to cultivate grace and wisdom. We trust. We believe. We know. We've seen this movie.

It is an entirely exhausting and exhilarating work in progress that lasts for eighteen years before it's over. But when it is, it's not goodbye. Not really.

As chilly as things were leading up to their drop off days years ago,  I knew looking into the faces of my daughters that only one of my roles in their lives was ending. I was not hanging up my mother-of-a-daughter hat, but merely trading it for one better suited to the mother of a woman. With their looming freedom and growth, would come experiences we'd discuss as women who could relate to, and possibly learn from each other. 

But boys? 

"We already don't talk as much," said my friend about the son she'll launch next week. 

I shared two stories with her.

Ally me with my grown up girls

A month ago I invited my oldest son, a journalist, over for tacos and advice. I was to appear on a radio show where I'd talk about something I'd experienced in the community. I was nervous about appearing and knowing he'd understand this first-hand, I asked what he'd done to quell his nerves before his own radio appearances. He had some suggestions that were truly helpful. "Can I listen?" he asked. "Oh, I don't think you have to." I said. "Gotcha," he said, understanding completely.

Two weeks ago, my daughter, a bride-to-be, came home for several days.  We planned her reception seating, we picked up her dress, we had pedicures. We talked about relationships, about marriage, about learning to make decisions as a couple and defending them to others. I asked how I could be her ally and not her critic in her coming life as a new bride. She told me she never wanted to defend herself to me, and I nodded. It wasn't because we're both women that I understood this. I understood because I respect her as a person.

This week, our son will leave for his sophomore year at college.He will likely not be back next summer. There will be internships, chances to work and room with a friend in another city, opportunities to travel, etc.  "I don't know where I'll be," he said, in complete honesty.

It feels like goodbye this time. But the takeaway after a year in the empty nest is this: It's different to mother girls over boys, and it's different to separate from each. But with the distance that follows, and only after they find their independent footing comes an opportunity to be people in their lives as they will be in ours, who understand each other.  It trumps every other role we've had to date, and if we let it, it thins out the weight of goodbye. 

And that, Bernice, is where the difference ends.

The magic of nine months

Disclaimer:  I am going to speak for everyone with grown children in the post which follows. I shouldn't. But I had to choose between being a know-it-all or starting every paragraph with the passive, more sensitive "It's been my experience" and that will just make you tired.  Herewith...

It's been about nine months since many of us dropped off a college freshman,  then went home to store seasonal clothes, books, and extra linen in their rooms. By now, many of us are meeting the people they became in this near year apart. 

Few things change a young adult like the first year in college.

You catch glimpses of it during the holidays, when they're home for the first time since the drop off.  Something's different. You're not quite sure what "it" is but you know it wasn't there before. They're a little wistful.  They hug you more. They smile easily. They seem peaceful. They keep you company when you're cooking and come into the living room where you're reading and say, "So, what's up?" 

Eventually you realize that the "it" is not a passing mood,  but maturity. Not maturity in the wash-their-own-clothes and make-their-own-meals sense.  Maturity in that, by now they have chosen to perform beyond their own expectations, or screw up magnificently, but have lived with the outcomes. Some that were affirming, others that led to consequences that you will learn about over some Thanksgiving dinner many years from now. 

           

It can be an awkward little dance we do at the start of this first summer back at home. We don't want to enforce curfews or nag them to eat better or tell them when to get up. We're not those parents anymore. We're more like the aunt and uncle they were always particularly fond of.  Encouraging, supportive and special like parents, but no longer the factor in their decision making that we used to be.  

           

They don't need rules but they may want advice. They look at us when we're speaking. They disagree with tact, even humor. They respect our space and our changed lives. And, they answer to themselves; not to flaunt their new authority over their choices, but because they know more about the cause and effect of choice.

           

There was always a unique and fleeting moment in the reorientation to our children, after they traveled away, grew up and came back and it was in observing them as others might. The ones who didn't actually raise them. 

You know them well, you love them like you always did, you're still as proud of what they've achieved. But in that moment, you realize who they have chosen to become, and what they expect to achieve - under their own influence.           

     

There is a certain equality that we approach with our children after they leave for college, and all of us have had a chance to stretch our lives, broaden our roles, pursue new projects.  We see what they've accomplished ,with nobody clicking on the lights, opening the shade and saying "time to get up." They begin to notice what we do that has nothing to do with parenting.

           

"Update your blog," said my daughter recently.

           

"Where are you on the novel?" asked my son a month ago.           

It's lovely, surprising, and a little poetic the way our children come into our lives a new person, for the second time,  after only nine months.

It's kind of magical.

Welcome back, kids.

Teenagers, it's hard for us too.

A teenager who was
 nice to me

I am grateful for a lot of things but I am deeply grateful for this: with few exceptions, my teenagers were nice to me.

I wish I didn't know how unusual my experience was, but reminders like this are everywhere:

Across from me in a restaurant, a woman was seated with two boys, around nine and fifteen. From the way one, but not the other, interacted with her, and from the way each behaved as though the other weren't there,  I'm assuming they were her sons.

The younger boy, clearly relishing her attention, engaged his mother with jokes and chatter and stories. The older boy, slumped in the corner of the booth like a crumpled shirt, said nothing. 

While the younger boy chatted, the woman sat forward in her seat smiling, nodding, listening, smiling, nodding, listening... During pauses in the conversation, she turned to the older boy and made polite attempts to include him all to which he responded with long looks at his phone, impatient shrugs and a very irritated look of "How would I know?"  

I wanted to slip her a note: "It gets better." But that would have been presumptuous. For all I knew the behavior of her fifteen-year-old was an improvement over the way he normally punched his brother in restaurants.

To be  scorned by a child who has adored you for years is the hardest, most bewildering experience parents describe in the parenting years. It's expected and it's expected to be hard. But like labor itself, it hurts more than you think it should.

"How would I know?"

It starts suddenly, with the  whatever stage. It evolves into the later What?? Nothing! Nothing's wrong! Stop asking me that. Just leave me alone. Why are you like that all the time? stage which lasts another year or so but feels like longer. Finally, in the last stages, convinced of how little they want from us, we find other things to do and other children to talk to, and try to remain silent while they negotiate life without us.

We  have been told to let the rope out, that they are entitled to their growth, their distance, their isolation. Still, it ages us, wakes us in the night, makes us cry. We know we'll live through it,  and so we brace, we accept, and above all, we wait.

Why are you like that? they ask us with that squint.

I love teenagers, they are mighty and mystifying and with rare exceptions, I've not looked into a teenage face and failed to see traces of the little person they once were behind that squint. But it is their parents, with their fixed, neutral expressions and hidden hurt and unwavering resolve to stay near, who have my heart.

And I wish

if only for a few moments

that a teenager...

...could view their separation through the eyes of the parent who - with no warning -  has been shown the door but instead, moves to the other side of the room like a quiet child who still wants to see what's going on.

...who feels powerless in a world of influences beyond the home - could know their power to hurt a parent with a single look, a single, scornful statement: Why are you like that?

...who feels insignificant without a circle of friends - could know the way their single bad day will - instantly - reverse the most wonderful day in the life of a parent.

...who should be allowed to make a bad decision, to act like a jackass - would remember that it isn't possible to act in any way that will change the way a parent loves them.

...who would be crushed if a peer were to treat them with the contempt and disrespect that they inflict on a parent, could know it hurts just that much. 

...could remember that there are other teenagers who experience the reverse - parents who have given up on them, taken back their own freedom, ceased their communication - and would trade places with a luckier teenager in a heartbeat.

But most of all, I wish that teenagers, who need more than the air they breathe to be loved for who they are, could see that equal to their efforts to journey away, is the parent's determination to walk with them, even if at enough distance  to avoid getting stepped on.

All four of my teenagers evolved into adults I admire and adore. Today I enjoy relationships with them that are among my most rewarding, energizing, inspiring - and loving.

It does get better. It is worth the wait. But for some parents, it isn't free. 

Teenagers, I wish you knew, it's hard for us too.

December in the empty nest

When we were little and felt sorry for ourselves, my father used to help us keep perspective with this gem:

 I cried because I had no shoes. And then I saw someone with no feet.

Or words to that effect.

I got the point.  Of course, it trumped the point to picture my barefoot father having a calm  conversation with a man whose legs ended above the ankle, but it resonated.  To this day, I am not comfortable with self-pity.

With some exceptions.

So I will apologize in advance for the self-pity you will come across in this post by mentioning the "feet" for which I am truly thankful every single day:  

• Children who are happy, healthy and making their way in the world with grace and appreciation for their own feet.
• Work that is not-income-producing-at-this- time but which makes me complete.
• Larry, who supports this and all of my dreams.
• Family who knew me when I was at my most wretched and love me anyway
• Friends who call when I haven't been around and suggest lunch.
• An existence that  teaches me new things about life and love every day.

 As I've posted before,  my nest did not empty with gentle exits, but with a gust of wind which blew up from underneath and tipped it all over. Two sons moved out within a week of each other. Two weeks later, Larry started an assignment and was gone five days a week.  Gus, my empty nest cat, and I were left to blink at all those tail lights together.

Gus, empty nest cat.

Everyone asked how I would handle this sudden change - the loneliness - but I wasn't worried. I had plans, and, after being everyone's administrative assistant for a couple of decades, I rather liked that I would be thinking about me, me, me for awhile.

Before mid November, not only had I grown tired of  me , me,  me,  but knowing the kids would be home, I regressed altogether and looked forward to creating the holiday home they experienced as children: At Thanksgiving, pumpkin bread, favorite dips, casseroles.  In December, cookies with red and green sprinkles,  letters from Santa, notes on closet doors reading "don't look in here" with a stern face.

In my excitement, I lobbied for an earlier tree  than usual - say December 1 - suggesting to Larry that with everyone gone it might help keep my spirits aloft.

I will pause here to say that very responsibly, Larry objected to this on the basis of dry needles and fire hazards before saying, hero-like, on November 30,  "So who feels like getting a tree?"

On December 5, I  looked around. An unopened package of sugar cookie mix sat on the counter where I'd placed it days ago.  On my wrapping table no boxes waited for me to find the time to wrap ... there was music in the air that I wished would end already, and across the room a fire flickered which just seemed out of place.

I thought of two empty nest friends and their recent remarks about the new feel to such a traditional season.

"I'm not a fan of Christmas these days," said one.

"I don't really like anything about December, now." said another.

I didn't want to understand the sentiment, but here I was, the Christmas Eeyore I never thought I'd become, relating completely. 

So, before my fully decorated November tree I sat and waited for something to happen without knowing what it should be.  I looked around at the decorations - Santa on the piano, snowman on the table, deer and tree thing by the fireplace - and wanted to put them back.  Certainly, I realized that  I was missing my kids and husband, but it was more than that.  No nostalgia touched my soul, no sudden thought for a long lost friend or loved one drifted through my heart. No sweet memories in connection with all those ornaments, ours now for nearly three decades, rose before my eyes.

I waited a long time for my spirit.

I tried again the next day.

Finally, I stopped expecting it and avoided the whole festive scene.

There's your empty nest.

There's your missing shoes.

It used to surprise me to hear our kids say,  even in the last days before a holiday reunion with each other, "I'm just not in the spirit, but I will be as soon as I'm home." This holiday season, I get this. I am reminded of when I dated Larry on the weekends, and how very little spirit in December I felt until I sat across from him in a restaurant on Friday night, whether there was a tree to look at or not.  Spirit to be spirit, must be shared. Somehow. 

Next year, I'll remember:

I can't summon my sluggish spirit by putting up the tree,  rearranging the furniture, and putting the deer and tree thing near the fireplace early. Next year, in the absence of others with whom I  have always shared these surroundings as well as my spirit, I will instead, change things around a bit;  create new traditions, maybe put up the tree no earlier than December 15 and in a different part of the house, decorated only with ornaments that we buy in places to which we have started to travel, maybe do these new things  every year after that.

As for this year's shoes:

Tomorrow, Sam will come home for the long holiday break. I'll pick him up and we'll dine in the city - something we both love. On Wednesday, I will meet a favorite new friend of mine for a holiday drink. In a few days Larry will be home and over the weekend, we'll entertain and be out with our oldest friends.  The cookies will be made and the gifts will be wrapped and I will leave signs that say "do not look in here" with a stern face.

Old traditions and rituals are wonderful as long as they free the spirit and don't leave it trapped in the past. When that happens, perhaps it's just time to find another kind of November tree to look at.

Maybe even an artificial one that the kids would hate, but which is there for you when they can't be.

The art of shutting up

Mother not minding her business
 but in a nice,supportive way

I got some conflicting feedback recently on this blog:

This: "I love when you write about your kids."

And this: "You might want to write about things other than your kids."

So today, I flipped a coin: 

Heads:  Benghazi

Tails: Changes in communication with adult children

Tails.

Two things happened (that I want to know about) after Sam turned eighteen in his first week at Elon. He became an adult, and he developed a bad cough.  Last weekend,  bright-eyed and fresh-faced after a month and a half on his own, exhilarated by a successful round of midterms, and full of stories about friends and campus antics,  he arrived home for the fall break, barking like a seal.

"Still? I asked.

"It's okay," he said. "I sound worse than I am. I'm not sick."

His dance card, as my father would call it, was full for the weekend: rounds of visits with old friends, an overnight in Boston, a day of football with his brother, and more. 

Six months ago, Sam developed pneumonia. The onset was sudden, it had been no more  than a bad cough for a few days.  Then his fever soared into the seizure zone, he was unable to stay hydrated, and he was hospitalized. It scared me to see him that sick, it scared  him to see them coming at him with an IV bag.

But teenagers have short memories after they realize they're going to live through something.

Had Sam still been seventeen last weekend,  and therefore, had I still been the boss of him,  I would have made an appointment for him, made him cancel those weekend plans, made him go to the doctor. But now, as I listened to him cough, I considered:  how to make this happen while respecting his new right to make such calls on his own? How to sway things  now, if, as an adult he places the priority of his social calendar above his health? And not at home anymore, where I can sit and plan an ambush, but at school where he says he will, but I think he won't, take the time to put a little hat on the Thermoscan, touch it to his ear, and wait those long 3 seconds for a read?

In other words, how to assure he handles these and other priorities my way, his way?

All too aware am I of the line that can be crossed by the over-mommy, and like most lessons, I learned this one the hard way, through an experience with Sam's older sister.

Jacqueline took a summer job between her  junior and senior year  in college. Anticipating the tight rental market in Boston, she enlisted the help of friends to rent an apartment while she was abroad - sight unseen. When she returned from Australia, she found a job. She put the whole thing together without so much as a request for "T" fare.

We saw it together for the first time. It was smaller than our front hall, it was filthy,  and it was unsafe. The locks on the back windows would not secure properly and the wiring in the bathroom needed repair. Light fixtures in another room wouldn't work properly and the short-term rental was contingent  upon her allowing the rental company to show the place to prospective fall tenants whenever they wanted to.

I was able to exert my "influence" enough to be sure the locks got fixed. But she had her own way of negotiating with the rental company which, when she shared it with me, struck me as passive. "You're out in the world now. You need to advocate for yourself really assertively," I said, only failing to tell her exactly how to do that to make it completely ironic.

Of course, this well-intentioned but insensitive statement made her angry - very angry -  and so she did what many adults would do whose choices and decisions were being second guessed, which was to stop  talking to me for a while.

It confused me.  Why wouldn't anyone want an experienced resource like me at their disposal? And not only someone who had dealt with her share of bombastic, uncooperative landlords, but a mommy, who, if necessary, could make that bad landlord very, very unhappy and guilt him into behaving properly?

Nothing makes you reflect  faster and more effectively on your behavior than when your child elects to stop sharing their decisions - any decisions - with you because of "how you get."  Very quickly, you learn to stop elbowing your way into a problem and wait, instead, for an invitation.

I shared this reflection with Sam over lunch  on that Saturday.  I told him that it's hard to know after so many years of being in charge, where the line lies between responsibility for our children and respect for their privacy. I told him that mothers are at their best when they exert what they believe, in their own minds anyway, is their power to keep their children safe. I explained that he should feel free to point it out if I miss the line while we both adjust to his now-adult status.  And, I told him that we can both look forward to an even nicer relationship based on relating to each other as adults. And then I asked him  if he thought it might be a good idea to consider stopping at the walk in clinic after lunch.

"Absolutely. Great idea," he said. "Let's do it."

My way, his way. All is well.

Next on Worth Mentioning:  Maybe something about the debate tonight, maybe something about other people's adult children and their life choices, I don't know.  I have my coin ready.