By the Seat of Our Pants

Posted September 07, 2007

0 |

I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

I am awake early this morning, with a milky cup of coffee and a feeling so literally as if my insides are knotted up that only when I wrote it down just now did I remember that it's a cliché. And there was actually another idea I had for a column this week -- the lighter stuff, the blog version of "America's Funniest Home Videos," everybody with spaghetti bowls on their heads, the dog barking out "The Star-Spangled Banner" before high-diving into the swimming pool -- but I can't write about that today when there's this bag of heavy, stainless steel knives and forks lodged behind my ribcage. This dread. This dreadful feeling that I have been properly cut into the correct shape of a parent, yes, but from some kind of cloth that frays and pills and is not actually keeping anybody warm enough.

Ben is getting his feelings hurt a little bit by some friends of his. Some friends of his that I adore, in fact. That's it -- and it's not really my story to tell, so I won't tell more of it than that. He's fine. He's happy. He's almost always in a good mood, that kid. But there was a sudden kind of welling up about it last night, like a little balloon of feelings had suddenly swelled and burst. I was great in the moment -- confidently comforting, problem-solving, rock solid in every way -- but after the kids fell asleep I was like one of those oranges that looks like an orange, but really it's just a trick because someone has pieced back together an empty peel. You know those oranges?

Since the moment they handed me his swaddled shape -- or, more precisely, since the moment the Demerol wore off -- I have worried about what it would be like to navigate the hurting of this person's feelings. Of course, I have also worried that the blade would somehow come loose on the Scotch tape dispenser and flip up to lodge in his eyeball, so what are we really talking about here, worry-wise, right? But this. I don't know. This is more or less what I feared -- not for Ben, so much, who is a great kid, and will surely land on his feet in life (or so I have wished upon every star and birthday candle and eyelash). But maybe for me. I feel suddenly heartbroken and inadequate, like Ben was picking wildflowers while all the other kids were getting fitted for their helmets and shoulder pads, and then I just went ahead and sent him out into the game anyway. And now I can coach from the sidelines, toss in a pair of shin guards and yell into the wind, but I am pretty much helpless. Tomorrow I won't feel like that, maybe. But today I do. Today I miss "Here, chew up these Tylenol," and "Ooh, let's get a Band-Aid for that," and even just the simple act of hiking up my shirt to offer a little milky Mama comfort.

The thing is, Ben's gentleness is a wonderful quality in him, and I am reassured by the fact that it's one he shares with his dad. When I watched him at school for a few minutes last week, I saw a friend of his say to him, while they were cutting up apples, "Ben -- trade knives with me! Mine doesn't cut." And when he said, in his sunny way, "Okay!" I could suddenly picture Michael saying the exact same thing -- "Okay!" -- on the plane, when I asked him to swap headphones because one of the earpieces on mine had a pokey thing on it. These are beautiful examples of the male species, these two. But now I just want to pack them up into a boat, along with the fierce and resilient Birdy, and I want to set sail, glide off to the place where it will be just us, with the salt sea and the starry blue bowl of twilight for company.

Which is a direct contradiction of how I usually feel, which is that all of our friends should just move in with us once and for all so that every single day would feel like the party that it is. And if you said, "This is really about you," I would say, "No duh!" because it's true. It is. I remember too acutely what it felt like when "excluding" suddenly worked its way into the vernacular of my grade-school friendships. I remember when friendly threesomes split suddenly into twos and ones, like there was some kind of ionic reaction at work. I remember notes ("We don't want to be friends with you any more.") and prank phone calls ("You want to marry The Fonz -- ha ha ha ha!") and the tides pulling one way, then another, always shifting and dangerous, always with the undertow. And it's just kid stuff, sure, and it's totally normal, yes, but when you're in it, what it is is your life. And right now it's the life -- a piece of the life -- of this child for whom I would suffer every pain in the world. For whom I do.

Member Comments On...

By the Seat of Our Pants

Family

Account Warning

Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

By the Seat of Our Pants

Member Comments On...