Ready, I realize

For your convenience, I have posted the italicized back story below to enhance your appreciation for the post which follows.

Sam, somewhere in the
middle of  his
 junior year

A while back, I registered a blog address called sbonifant@blogspot.com. Why did I register that address when I already had atticview.blogspot.com?  Because two years ago I moved, and stopped writing in an attic all the time. Then, I started to re-think  the "everything" nature of my current blog and decided to create a new blog  around a single theme.  I did that, and of course, with Sam leaving soon, I  titled it, "Empty Nest."  I never got past the home page where I posted, "Be here soon! Still sweeping out the nest!"  because when I looked at it later,  even I thought it was tedious.  

 

 Indeed,  Sam, our fourth and final child  leaves for Elon on Thursday. And how does it feel for the last child to be leaving home? I am asked often, and most often by people ushering first-borns into their senior year. I understand. If I were the parent of a senior and talking to me, I'd ask too, because when a first child leaves for college in only a year, it's a big deal. To imagine the last child leaving is a jumbo-deal.

I have developed an auto-reply, which is this: "I have my moments, but we're ready."   I sometimes say it before I'm asked, the way we say "good," before someone asks how we are.

It doesn't require a therapist to understand that this efficient response is meant to redirect the conversation before I have a chance to babble out a more authentic, but messier response, like this:

Curious Person: "How are you, Susan? How does it feel to have your last child leave the nest?"

Susan:  "Actually, person, I'm struggling. I was putting something in my October calendar the other day when I remembered that life as I know it will have changed by then and then  I had to put the calendar away and be with my feelings for awhile. How are you?"

The "I have my moments, but we're ready" response, economical as it is, is clearly the better choice.

Here is the story of what happened when all the moments formed themselves into an army of moments and resolved to advance. 

Last Monday, I discovered that this blog is being read more often than I thought. So I decided to fix it up, tinker with format, change the template, colors, title and so on. It's a nesting thing, this tidying up of a particular environment before a major change occurs.  Before each child was born, I changed the furniture around. Same thing.

I started by organizing the content of the blog. Since 2008 when I started it, I've written almost 100 posts, but I've been lazy about labeling them. Some are, some aren't, some labels go with only one post like this: 

Label: People Building Snowmen (1).  

But eight of them, written  between the middle of Sam's junior year and today, deal with Sam and the label of "letting go", to wit:

Sam teaching me about rap.
Sam being mortified when I was stopped for speeding near the high school - twice.
Sam learning to drive and getting his license
Sam backing into my car and offering me a decade of birthday money to pay for it.
Sam preparing for and taking the SAT
...submitting the application to Elon

... being accepted and attending orientation

And, finally, Sam graduating.

In these posted accounts of this or that experience, my respect for him is clear, what we mean to each other, obvious. No wonder; it was during this period of our lives together when I learned Sam's expectations of himself were as great as my own, and, when he learned he would earn his independence by not compromising my trust.  Indeed, as I read, I realized that more than he was grateful for my trust, he cherished it. Oh, the things we realize, that we already knew.  

I finished labeling the posts, changed the background eleven or twelve times, changed the font, and font color and font size until it was perfect. I signed out, and signed in as if I were a newcomer.

Then,  I thought, why not use that new sbonifant.blogspot address for the blog instead of atticview.blogspot because, really, I am sbonifant and I don't write in the attic.  I went into the secret labyrinth of blogness and found the "domain redirect" feature. Then I set it up so that atticview.blogspot.com would now be replaced by sbonifant@blogspot.   Then I experimented, typing  into the search bar, sbonifant@blogspot.com.

Redirecting... it said, before bringing me to

(I wonder how many people know what I'm going to say, now)

Empty Nest. "Be here soon!"

"Huh?" I said this right out loud.

I did it again.

Empty Nest. "Be here soon!"

Atticview.blogspot, I typed.

Empty Nest. "Be here soon!"

Susan Bonifant, I googled, getting nervous.

Redirecting...

Empty Nest. "Be here soon!"

I hadn't overwritten Empty Nest with Atticview, I'd done just the opposite.

My blog was nowhere.

Lost.

And I, as Sam would say, fffrrrreeaakked.

Couldn't be.

Can't be.

Might be.

Probably is.

Gone?

Four years of writing. Gone?

My book progress, job hunting, accounts of life, children, friends, everything... Gone?

But worse...far worse...my perfect, in-the-moment accounts of the high points of Sam's last eighteen months at home.  Gone?

And there they were,  that army of moments, advancing. And here I was with zero defense.  Because with all that I was to let go of, what I needed most, what I could never replace, what I'd put in a place for safekeeping, to look back at when Sam was gone - was lost. And I was not ready anymore.

First, I considered the appointments I would cancel for the day while I recovered. Then, I started clicking randomly, going into pages that meant nothing to me, clicking links for "help" which brought me nowhere, until I found: restore original blog settings. 

I had it back in moments. But I haven't found the word yet to describe the moments when I didn't know I would. 

I knew, and yet have realized a final time, that while our children leave, they leave us with momentos of who they were until they left: the songs they love, the movies they watched over and over, the elderly neighbor who still tells of the day your child cared enough to stop the car and get out to say hello, the cat who curls up on the made bed, the hundreds of baseball caps and all the plaques, neatly placed in a tidied room, the only two ties he ever wore, side by side on an hanger. 

August 19, 2012

In ways we don't realize we find ways to store the memories for safekeeping - to be ready when goodbye comes. For some of us it's a photo album, for others it's our ability to recall a sharp memory, for me it was to document it in a blog.  But when someone asks you, how does it feel to know your child is leaving for college,  always be sure you've kept the best parts of them in a place you can go back to. And then, with authenticity, say:

"I'm ready."

Don't make me use my writing

I think the following story is blog-worthy. It's not like the sixty dollars story which was popular, judging from my google stats, but it's a good story with a little takeaway message at the end so keep reading.

The other day, I made a sizable deposit at (I'll call it Joe bank).  It was a funds transfer, meant for Sam's tuition.

Did I make the deposit at the counter? Of course not. I never do that. That's what ATMs are for.

Before I made the deposit did I endorse it? Of course not. I never do that and have never had a problem.

La la la. Out came the little summary of my transaction:  7 day hold.

First I said a very bad word. Then I parked the car. Then I went in to see someone about having the hold lifted.

I explained my situation to a teller at the counter. Soon, I was ushered into one of the little perimeter offices behind the glass, where well-dressed twenty-three-year-old bankers oscillate between texting their friends about the weekend and handling the business of a person who looks as if they are about to have a tantrum.

Given my twenty year history of good banking behavior across several accounts, and knowing that banks are well within their discretionary rights to lift a hold when they damn well feel like it (7 day holds were necessary when banks across the land were tiny and funds had to travel back and forth by horse and buggy. Now, banks - the tall and the small - can verify electronically, and overnight, that  Mary bank can pay Joe bank without any risk whatsoever to Joe bank. I checked.)

In the little office, my well-dressed, twenty-three year old (heretofore known as WDTTYO) banker asked me pertinent questions while he clickety-clacked on his keyboard and brought up the history of me. With an apologetic smile, he told me the bank could essentially do nothing.

"Retrieve the physical check," I suggested. (They can do this. I checked).

"Gosh, I wish I could, but it's gone by now. But here's what you can do. After we image it tomorrow or the next day, you can call me and I'll give you the bank information and then you can call someone at the bank and tell them the situation and then you can ask them to produce a statement, on letterhead, to verify that the funds  are in place, and then they can send that to me, and then we'll make a decision about the hold after that and then you can stay in touch with me about that decision."

Because I don't know the secret bank handshake, I suggested that he do all of those things after the check was imaged.

"Gosh, I would love to do that for you," he said, "But they won't talk to us. It's your check."

"How long will this take?"

"Well, it's a process. It takes a few days."

"How long is a few days?"

"It could take up to a week."

7 days.

"Please don't make me point out that we've been solid banking customers for twenty years and hold several accounts here. There's got to be a way to release the hold sooner than that," I said.

"OH, believe me," he said meaningfully, "I sure do want to keep your business." He slid his card across the desk. "Call me tomorrow."

I called my WDTTYO banker the next day to ask if the check had been imaged. He put me on hold for a few minutes, came back, and said, "Gosh it sure hasn't."

I'm not the kickass type.  I'm usually nice and reasonable and I play fair. If I can do more to help someone, I do. I'm rarely mistreated or disrespected or on the receiving end of lazy business judgment. But I sense it when someone refuses to do more because they just don't feel like it.  When I checked into it, I was assured that "banks absolutely talk to each other all the time." Banks eat lunch together and go for manis and pedis. They're friends who have a lot in common.

Here's something my father taught me back when funds transfers were verified by horse and buggy:

Don't ask for anything until you're ready to walk, then ask for everything.

So, I asked for the manager's name and email address. Then I lined up a new account with a nicer bank (I'll call her Alice bank). Then I wrote a letter to the manager of Joe bank. I explained my situation and described the bank's limp sock of a response.  I told the manager about the decision I would have to make now concerning future deposits. I asked for guidance.

"If I can expect service like this from Joe bank in the future, I will move everything to Alice bank where I have already had better service in similar situations. I sure do hope you can help me decide."

Long story short - this could have been longer - I got a call the next day and the ship was righted. Instantly.

And I don't even think my WDTTYO banker will be in that much trouble, because I went out of my way to describe how polite he was. I did not report that  while his smile was saying gosh this and gosh that,what his eyes were saying was "Please get the hell out of here so I can make plans with my buddies for the weekend." I kept that to myself.

Writing is my weapon  tool of choice. Yours may be the ability to think on your feet and verbally full-nelson someone who is being unfair. Or maybe you're twenty-three and adorable and can charm someone else into doing something your way. Whatever. Don't let your power depend on whether or not someone else does their job. Make your power depend on knowing what you deserve, polite but unwavering determination to get it, and having an adequately stocked arsenal toolkit that you're not afraid to use.

Bother

The other day, I exited the highway one short and got stuck travelling in the wrong direction. It paid off.

       

I'm unable to judge distance in terms of feet so I'll just say, about eight or ten car lengths in front of me on the off ramp was a small, black SUV-ish vehicle. It swerved a bit and then, from the driver's side floated several papery items into the air - dollar bills. I stopped and got out, scrambling to gather up the bills. The black car slowed and I held up the handful of money.I was convinced the driver saw me, but the car disappeared.

I pulled over and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

A Sheriff's car pulled up and the officer leaned to ask if I was okay. I explained what I was doing and he left.

I began to think about what I was doing.

Then I began to think about what that sheriff would have done if he were not in uniform.

Then I wondered what my friends would do.

Then I wondered what my CEO friends would have done, what with all their chronic hurry.

I did not wonder what my children would have done, but I did wonder how long they'd wait.

So I texted all but the fourth who would have said "don't bother," and each responded, "5-10 minutes."

How much money was involved they asked and I said, "60."

How long had I already waited they asked, and I said, "A half hour."

Right after that my phone went dead. So I went to the police station and left the cash with a very surprised receptionist who couldn't believed I'd turned it in. I left her my cell phone number.

I wasn't surprised that she was surprised. It is unusual for someone to do that even though it necessarily means that it is more usual to drive through the airborne bills, or, pick them up and keep them.

But I have twenty-something children.

Sixty dollars fills my son's gas tank so that he can make it to work each day. Sixty dollars buys groceries or pays the electric for my daughters who are making their independent lives work. When I was eighteen, sixty dollars a week was about what I was paid to work in a stationery store for a middle-aged bully who said things like, "I'll bet you think you're just beautiful, don't you?"

Sixty dollars is a lot of money.

I came home and told all of this to my fourth child who was touchingly, very proud of me. I asked - I really wanted to know - if he thought the driver of the black car would go in search of his/her cash.

"No," he said.

"Cynic," I said.

"No, I'll explain," he offered. "The guy sees his money fly out the window. He says, 'Well that sucks. Sixty bucks. Damn.' If he saw you and didn't come back, he figured you'd kept it. If he didn't see you and didn't come back, why would he bother with the police station?"

Why would I, then? Why would anyone?

At around 9:00 that night, I picked up a voicemail from a tearful woman who had called to thank me for turning in her sixty dollars.  She'd spent an afternoon picking up and dropping off tired, hot, cranky kids and wanted to take them for ice cream. She stopped at the bank and in her haste, rested the envelope on the dash where the wind carried it away.  

"I saw it go flying everywhere," she said in her message. She ended by letting me know they were a young family who didn't have much. Sixty dollars meant a lot.

Why would anyone bother? That's why.

A someday talk with my grandsomeone

Every once in a while, I think about this question:  What’s happy?

It sounds tedious but it's not. It's tedious if you wake someone up to talk about it with you.

I think about these questions because someday, I will grand-sit a grandsomeone who may ask, “What does happy mean Grandmummy, and why are you wearing a necklace with a skeleton on it?” After l remind my grandsomeone that it's almost Halloween and that this is what fun Grandmummies wear to keep from being tedious be festive, I'll have something to offer:

Happy is knowing what you’re doing next and always having something to look forward to.

"Want to” things are happier when “have to" things are out of the way, I'll say, and I'll give an example: "Wouldn't it be more fun to go to Petco for a goldfish when the homework is done then to come home with the goldfish and have to wait until you finish homework to watch it swim and give it a name?"

My grandsomeone will ask if we can buy a goldfish later and I will think it over.

Also, I’ll explain that happy isn’t getting what you want as much as knowing what you want. And, that it's a feeling and not a thing. The feeling of seeing someone you miss the second they get off a plane, of winning a contest, of waking up on the first morning of summer vacation, of learning to pedal a bike.

My grandsomeone will tell me that the perfect name for a goldfish would be "Goldie," and I'll agree.

Then I'll tell my grandsomeone that life is happier if you ask questions of it. For instance, I'll say, "Better to plan life or live it? Take the shorter, easier path or the twisty, interesting one? Better to be brave or honest?  A dreamer or a thinker? Popular or respected?"

My grandsomeone will answer every question with "Both," and because that is the correct answer to many either-or things, I will point that out.

Then I'll ask my grandsomeone if we should go to Burger King or McDonalds for lunch and my grandsomeone will look confused and say, "Both?" and I'll say, "No. Let's go to McDonald's because the french fries are healthier."

It's not going to happen soon, but it's possible that I will have this kind of conversation with a grandsomeone some day. It's possible I'll be asked a question like, What is happy?  It's not in my DNA to be a grandmummy who says, "Gosh, grandsomeone, I've never thought about that."

So I'm thinking ahead. I already love the drive-thru. All I need is a skeleton necklace. 

Into the Green and White Everything

Green and white...

Colors of early summer.

In our town, the colors of promise

and full lives not yet realized.

Colors of you did it.

The graduates,

with their lip gloss,

and flip flops,

and now straightened teeth,

and now cleared skin,

and longer term plans,

who hug us now like they mean it,

and tell us with softer eyes, I love you too...

a little bit stunned by what has passed,

awed by what might come,

and yet prepared for anything...

marched 

past our wistful smiles and misty eyes

and hearts full of anything for you...

into the green and white land of

Everything.

At First

Recently, Elon held it's two-day spring orientation for "incoming freshman" as they are called. I took Sam. There, we joined a hundred or so other high school seniors who meandered, phones in hand, at the side of their parents while they scanned the surroundings for information: where to go, what to wear, how to be. Sam reached the end of this two-day trailer of his future with high expectations which dove-tailed nicely with my own. All of Sam's siblings have marched into this same forest of unknowns and thank you God, have each emerged with maturity, wisdom and all of their limbs.

In the spirit of been-there-done-that, I didn't expect to be impressed with the advice offered by Elon faculty to incoming parents. Indeed, after the Assistant Dean of Students began with "These are days of hope and fear," I began to think about where to eat.

But  the message became unique with two words at its center that can make the difference between success and failure in any new environment (and for anyone). They are:  at first.

For better or worse, nothing remains as it is, "at first."

Because this parallels my  philosophy of "right now," (quick review: Everything, good or bad, is just right now) and because the advice was coming from a person of obvious status, and because it was delivered  with a song of a southern accent, I paid attention.

"You hope they'll catch on fire, find their perfect major, perfect internship, perfect friends. They will," said the speaker, "but not at first." 

"You fear they'll be lonely, homesick, overwhelmed, and awkward. They will," she continued. "At first."

"At first, they will call," said the speaker. "You will hear the loneliness, the uncertainty.  They may cry. They won't know what to do. Then they will hang up. One of you will feel worlds better. It won't be you."

The requisite "letting go" speech came next and by now I expected to be enlightened. I was.

For a parent, said the speaker, the hardest thing about early contact with a child who has just left for college, is hearing the struggle in their voice over an experience they didn't ask for.

"Give your child their mistakes," was her advice, reminding us that it is our mistakes rather than our success that we learn from. Every mistake we fix for them, she added, robs them of a consequence which might have yielded  important information to a successful life.

The parting advice:  "Give your child their lives. When you get that call, listen to their woe until they've finished speaking. And then don't board a plane, or drive to the campus, or do anything else to rescue them. Ask, 'And what will you do about that?'" 

Then, listen.

This matters. Listening is easier said than done, and many people think they're listening when they're really waiting for a turn to speak. I've done both. Real listening generates a spontaneous, heartfelt response, not a planned one. There isn't better advice for the parent of an outbound high school senior, anywhere. Don't rescue. Just listen.

It strikes me that our children learn to grow up the way we learn how to parent:  with high expectations and with courage to face the experiences they didn't ask for. Giving ourselves advice, and then following it, is a direct route to confidence.  

Sam and the rest of those incoming freshman will fill their own libraries with volumes of lessons learned if they're allowed to. Someday, they will accompany our grandchildren to an orientation, and want to leave them with a few choice selections from those shelves. Their gracious children will accept them politely, find a place for them where they won't be in the way, and not look at them again.   

At first.

Okay, Patriots, here's my heart. Don't drop it.

I have never been a patient spectator of sports. They take too long to play, and because I’ve been a non-spectator for a long time, there’s too much back story to ever catch up. I have this level of sports-love in common with about ten or twelve people in the United States.

It isn’t like I’m insulated. Inside the boy-house where I live, the sports presence is nearly year-round. The boys refer to people by their last names and describe behaviors I’ve never heard of.  They punctuate their running spectator commentaries as they watch a game with abrupt, spirited yelling. The intonation of an announcer’s voice over the din of a crowd, the exuberant swearing at disappointing plays, and the horns (or whatever they’re called) which bleat for no apparent reason are all usual sounds. 

No matter. Non-spectators like myself are not drawn by proximity to such activity. Nor do we want to change the activity. Non-spectators like myself have learned to deal with proximity to such activity by changing the proximity. Make a deposit, get the car washed, fill the tank, buy groceries. Non-spectators start Monday mornings with bright eyes and very short to-do lists.

Occasionally, however, there are exceptions. Occasionally it’s necessary to know something about a particular championship because if you don’t, you will feel the way you would if you didn’t know who was running for president.  You will go to work and have to endure endless references to some game, some play, and people will look in your direction from time to time with sympathy, as though you’ve just arrived from another planet without language skills or limbs.  Occasionally, even if you use the endless hours perched before a sporting event to think through unsolved problems, organize your next project, shop Ann Taylor online from your phone, or plan the week’s menus, it’s still necessary to walk into work armed with a sound bite or two.

And, the truth?  It’s lonely belonging to such a tiny minority of non-spectators.  And, the more important truth?  This year, “Our” team has a better than good chance of winning the Superbowl.  I more than should know about this. I want to know.

Lucky me, I live with a sportswriter who can explain anything and a seventeen-year-old who can illustrate anything on a post-it for easy, later review. A couple of weeks ago, I approached them.

“What is this championship all about and who’s involved?”

In seconds, one showed me a table of the six best in both the AFC and the NFC as well as the “ones to watch” in the anticipated play-offs. The other had drawn tiny pictures of Ray Lewis and Ed Reed on a post-it along with their descriptions: “psycho machine boss,” and “fast and skinny.”

 I began to understand. Only a little faster than the pace at which grass grows, but still - I began to understand.

 “Wait,” I said. “Our Patriots could win this?”

God love them, they responded to this with silence.

So, I’ve been studying for the Patriots-Ravens game, asking questions and understanding the answers. For an hour last week, while I drove home from Boston alone, I listened to 107.7 to learn how the Texans did against the Ravens, knowing “Our Patriots” would have an easier time of it if they faced off against Yates.

Yes, I know who Yates is.

It’s worth asking yourself to the party sometimes.  It’s worth asking to be taught something you don’t know but will know well if you try. And tomorrow, I not only want this game to go right, I want to participate in the excitement if it does. On Monday, when I go into work, I want to hear someone say, “How about those Patriots?” and not get involved with something else when someone responds.

And next year, when I feel less like a novice, I will call them “Pats” like everyone else in the United States does, except for those ten or twelve.

But for now, Go Patriots. Don’t make me sorry for loving you.