One less passenger in the car

driving off on his own

He's off. After a flat tire start to the day, my first born was delivered to JMU, his new home for four years. To be honest, I am doing better than I thought I would, and better than he thought I would too, as he told me in front of his roommates family. " I thought she'd be worse" was the quote.
I have a few idea why I don't feel the earth beneath my feet has given way. First and quite incidentally, #2 started moving into #1's room before we even left the driveway. Looking back this was a good thing, I ran into another recently launched mom and she said the worst was walking by his empty room. Not an issue here.
And as you know I am a big fan of Mother Nature. She prepared us brilliantly. The day before he left I was helping him pack, " Oh I only have 7 pair of underwear", " NOW!, TODAY! you tell me this!" I not so calmly responded. " Today is the day I am packing" was his very calm reply incensing me all the more. Just then a friend texts me asking how it was going. My text back was " My sadness is tempered by my desire to ring his neck". I also called his dad, who was on stand by to help load the van and suggested he come sooner rather than later as there may be No child to send to college if I was left alone with him for much longer.
I also changed my room around, and painted for the first time in my life ( lame I know), and planned a dinner with friends, and sobbed sometimes, and signed up for trainings I have long wanted to do but was too busy parenting to have time for.
Making lunch for two hurt the first time, and the first time we sat down for dinner I noticed the dog was missing. Instead of her usual spot between Alex's chair and my own, she was upstairs lying by his bed in his new room. She knows. I wish I could bring her down when we go to visit in 34 days (who's counting?), but alas not possible.
#2 has taken over Alex's request for a picture a day of the dogs, and I am trying very hard to own my mother's mantra of " No news is good news".  And there are times, with our own busy lives that it feels right to have things the way they are. Then I heard his voice and had to hang up cause I started to cry. I am not sure how long I can go without laying eyes on my son, but we have not settled into a routine yet, he needs a week or two to get the feel of the place before I ask more of him, it's just how he works. We have sent pictures of food we have eaten, he has complained about the " girls" umbrella I packed for him, it was brown not black (who knew?) . He's already made plans to not come straight home at Thanksgiving break ( deep breath, don't let him hear your gasp), and he has figured out a whole lot. I am happy for him, and that beats my sad any day of the week, even if the car is a little lighter.
,

So I guess this is it then

7 days and counting til my oldest bird is out of the nest. This is the moment right? The one I was supposed to be thinking about and striving for since 11:03am  on February 17, 1995. Since the Dr with the red rimmed glasses handed the messy bundle over to me, who, with his blurry newborn eyes, established and intense " Are you my mother?" stare at me.
I have certainly seen the back of his head way more than I have seen his beautiful brownish eyes in the past four years. I guess just getting ready for next week. lots of practice, I have had with not seeing his face.
This is the moment I have been getting him ready for, to make his own decisions. Like when he was three and had two weeks of no daytime diapers and when getting ready for bed one night said to me, " Do I have to wear a diaper to bed?" and I said, " Well if you are ready to not wet your bed you can go without one," and he replied," OK, I am ready" and he was. It's amazing how my mind remembers these details and yet has lost so many others.

This is the moment he has been pulling for since the day he was 12 and working on my computer in my office and I asked him for something and his reply was 'It's MY life!". And I covered my smile with my hand because I wanted that movement to independence for my far too compliant and obedient first born.

And yet, while on vacation last week, the snarly, impatient mini~monster I have been tolerating made room for my boy to come back to me, with his out of no-where bear hugs and goofy " Mudder" when he wanted my attention. I know we will be in each others lives, and I know the importance of the parent child relationship, heck I make a living helping people who have decades ago left home unravel the ties that bind them to their parents. I also know, things will never be the same again. That the seat to my right at the table, where my oldest grunted at me for so long, or tolerated my game of  " High's & Low's"or sat when we played Golf or Hearts will be empty. And when he does return to resume his place he will be different, He will have had experiences I am sure I do not want to hear about for at least 5 years. And I will be different, having found my bearings after the nest tipped from the weight of him leaving it. We will have to find a place for him again that does not unbalance all of us.

#2 is ready to pounce on his room, it is practical, yet feels too soon, Plus#1 is refusing to take down his " decorations", which amount to several hundred carefully cut out pictures from his sports illustrated magazines. There are moments I cannot breathe. "He He Hwoo" isn't cutting it, like it didn't cut it 18 1/3 years ago.

I have fretted for years over what my parting words to him will be, something meaningful that he will surely forget in his anxiety filled state I was thinking,, but now I think, no. This is good. This is what we worked for, this is what I hoped for for him. It has been a pleasure.

It does look like she pushed him a little bit, must have been one of those defiant days

Generations

My son graduated high school today. I've been crying about his impending move on and off for a few months now, broken up by passionate packing of his belongings, when he drives me crazy, to hasten his trip. I imagine the same thing is happening in houses across the country, the world.
This morning, as I was getting ready I felt like the Long Island medium. I wore my grandmother's bracelet on purpose. I wanted her close today. I got more than I bargained for. For most of the early morning, I could not stop crying, and I felt such a pressure in my body. I wrestled with what kept looping in my head for a good 45 minutes. "He already thinks you are wierd, this will build his case." I said to myself. " Stop! Just stop!" I admonished the pressure and the tears, but they kept up. I tried to relieve a bit of the pressure by hugging him before we got in the car. I told him, "your great -grandfather could not finish high school, as smart as he was, with his eye on being a doctor. His family needed money and in those days, that meant quitting school and going to work. This is why today is important."  It helped only for a little while.

As we got on the highway the tears and the pressure resurfaced. It seemed inevitable, that as crazy as my son was going to decide I was, I had to tell him. I had to say the words I was being compelled to express from a different place and time.
So finally between exits 8 and 7 on I-84, I said, " Nanna and Pop-pop are so proud of you and they would be so happy to be able to be here with you today." He looked at me sideways, I'm confident he was thinking "Why didn't I catch a ride with my friends?" I felt like I had to explain myself a little. I told him." What you  do, what all of us do, while we think it is for our life here and now, it is actually for the future, for our grandkids and great grandkids down the line." I felt an immediate relief and we were quiet the rest of the ride to the stadium.
 What he did, Vincent Amedeous Baldassari, sacraficing his education for the good of his family was a lesson,  and he worked hard and had an amazing, world-traveling life inspite of his early sacrafice. And as you can see from the picture, he was a loving Great- Grandfather. I can hear the noise he was making to make Alex laugh as I type. They are alike, my stoic son and my stoic grandfather.
May his wisdom and strength guide you and support you in your adventures Alex. They would have been so pleased and proud.

Natural Child Launching

I do believe life is a circular. What you had visited you will visit again.

I gave birth to my children naturally. I did it for a variety of reasons, none of which were about being Superwoman. Most honorably I did it because I did not want drugs in my child, I also did not want drugs in myself ( I never feel good under anethesia) I did not want to miss a moment of this miracle and  the idea of someone sticking a needle in my back is enough to bring up my gag reflex even this morning, 15 years after my last child was born. I can honestly say the pain was so bad I wanted to die, 6 times, I counted. So I expected it with each subseqent pregnancy, and I have convinced myself I can count through anything. Plus the nature of child birth, of rest time inbetween the pain, made it, in my mind, tolerable. Then he had colic for three months and my patience were tried beyond what I would have thought was humanly possible.

 I am currently reassessing a few of my previously held premises. Or atleast reevaluating under the current parental challenge. I am  getting ready to launch an adoescent into college life. I would say Adulthood, but that would be a lie. He is still dependent on his father & me financially, so "college life" is as much as I will acknowledge. The pain associated with this process, while never reaching the "wanting to die " level, it atleast equivelant to a total body sunburn. I just can't get away from it. I try, I ran away last night, all the way to Big Y, where I spent my time buying things for THEM. I suck at running away.

My house is not one for the drama of " I hate you, " You are ruining my life", slamming doors and stomping feet. Ours is more like the cold war of the 80's. The silence is piercing. The tension is palpable. And I cannot stand it. I cannot count through it, and quiet honestly I think I will be just fine if I don't remember all of it.  As a family therapist, I understand it all. But unlike knowing when the wave of a contraction will build and ebb, this provides no break. It is a constant rawness of Grand Canyon eske distance, in the same house. Getting them to sit for 20 minutes for dinner before each returns to their own cave, leaving me with the echos of the quiet kitchen is torturous, for me. I realize some would find this a blessing.

What is reassuring is threetimes in the past week I have been told what a "nice kid" he is. I witnessed myself how he stayed behind and helped a girl pull a paddleboat out of the water,( while the only othermale in the group walked up the hill ahead of them) and I felt a swell of pride. In that moment saw both his great-grandfather and father in him. That I no longer have access to that side of him,the " nice" side is a good part of the pain. I know he is under a great deal of stress looking at leaving all he has ever known and venturing off into new waters, 7 hours from home, does nothing to comfort me when ever time I open my mouth I am met with  a clipped, sharp  you-are-so-annoying tone. I need a break from it.

Then there's this idea he has that one should be completely closed off. I am told literally nothing. I learn more from his friends than he would ever share. He has some ideas in his head that he needs to work out, and I know I cannot be part of it.

Whenever he really hurts me, I go pack a few more things for him to take to school. Atleast a little reminder that soon it will be over, and yet.
And yet I can only imagine this current pain will be replaced with another pain. I know it is easier to part when we are already distant. I don't want that for either of us.
My friends know, I am not a big drinker. Pathetic actually. Not that I do not enjoy a glass of wine on occassion. I do always struggle at the DR's office when filling out the frequency chart for drinking. There is no box to check for one glass every other month or so category. But two glasses will put me under, it's a liver thing I guess. I have decided though that some form of anethesia for the remainder of this launching sequence may not be a bad thing. Take the sting off the sunburn or such.

Endings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnQ8N1KacJc&feature=player_embedded

So a long time ago, as the world watched the last episode of  Seinfeld and this poignant song played in the background, I knew in my bones my marriage was over.I haven't told anyone that before, until today. It took another three years for my knowledge to become reality. But that night, standing in my living room with my newborn, a 20 month old and a 3 year old and the neighbor who came to watch with me because my husband had gone to VT, in an emergency jaunt to return a table to his father, something inside me knew. That emergency jaunt was a huge sign, we, like most,  had watched most of Seinfeld together over the course of our life. Missing the last one, the one the world turned into, yeah something was over. "Another turning point a fork stuck in the road." "Something unpredictable but in the end was right."
" yada yada yada, & I mentioned the bisque"

This week, Thursday to be exact, another TV show ends, coinciding with another ending in my life. The kids and I were late to " The Office". My brother Sean mentioned it to me one year at Christmas, we watched an episode or two but it was mean. I was still getting over how mean Napoleon Dynamite was, I wasn't ready for Dwight & Jim & Michael. Then, on a vacation when the kids needed to get out of the sun in the middle of the day, we got hooked. We looked forward to our "Office" siesta each day. So much so that when we came home, we Netflixed all the past seasons and marathon watched them.

This was back when Netflix was on computers, and we hunkered down in my office to my 18 inch desk top to watch back to back episodes from the end of school Friday to late Saturday night. On these nights, when I see my children's faces for all of 20 minutes over dinner, these memories are sweet.

Their bodies squeezing into the love seat with me, fighting over who gets to sit next to me, "HA "very different from the four of us and two dogs fighting for inches on my king sized bed, and compressing their bodies so as not to brush up against me by accident.

So we watched. We pulled " Jim's" on each other, we cheered for Pam & Jim to get together, we laughed at Dwight's blind devotion to Michael, we were blown away by the writing and creativity, we cried when Michael left (OK that was just me, but they wondered if it would still be as good), we worried about the fate of Pam & Jim's relationship when Brian the camera man seemed interested and Jim was busy with his new company.We talked about what it takes to make relationships work, even make believe ones. It brought us together for one night a week for half and hour. Nick watches when Matt is not around, for hours on end. We have several board games, a few T-shirts, Dwight squishy heads and know what episode is coming before the openning credits play.

And this week, it's over.
 And Alex is leaving.
 Not this week, but since " The Office" is one of the only things that anchors him to this house, and AP exams are over, I'm thinking I may be seeing the back of his head more than anything else soon.
This Thursday, I will savor every moment of the last two hours of "The Office", and the four of  us hunkered together in the same 6X6 space. I am confident I will cry, and they will role their eyes. This is a TV show ending for them, and a turning point for us as a family.
And I can honestly say I had the time of my life.

Must have done something good

I've been sick, have basically not left my bed since Saturday at 6 pm. What started as a sore throat ended up kicking my butt with body aches, congestion, dizziness and just general bluk, blah and other details not needed to share.
I don't get sick, well rarely, and when I do, I do not stay in bed, But I cancelled ten clients on Monday, so that shows how badly I felt. I'm not writing this to complain, but to celebrate my boys,
As the curmogenly adolescent angst is a constant present in my home. It is very nice to experience what I hope is the men they are becoming.
Michael stopped on a dine every time I texted him with " let dogs out/ in" " Puffs please"  " I need an ice pack" Can you put socks on my feet" He never complained, he kept his distance, but was Johnny on the spot when I asked for something. Even tried to turn that sock thing into a tickling situation, which was not well timed.

Alex was up at Uconn checking out that possibility. Nick was at a sleep over but I texted him when I woke up Sunday morning and realized I could not get out of bed. He came home immediately to check on me then went back out to CVS to tell the pharmacist my symptoms and get their recommendations for my medications. He brought them back to me and sat with me all day, while I slept fitfully on and off. Whenever I woke up, he was sitting there next to me, when he didn't have his own life to take care of. Right up to 8 o'clock when he normally goes in to bed. He texted with Adele expressing concern over my lack of appetite, and the calvary arrived with more food and drink than i could eat in a week. Nick stopped by again last night before going out on a date to check on me again, and just hung out with me for 15 minutes.
Alex checked in and asked if there was anything he could do for me, and Jane held me accountable for going to the dr and gave me things I need to be doing.

So even during moments of yuck, bluk and grosseess. Life is good.

fight with laughter

I've been quiet, I know. Since 12/14 I have focused on the wounded coming into my practice, my family's recovery, my friends', my town and my own. I felt that I had nothing significant to add. The common voice of reasonable guns laws booms loudly, mental health needs and acts of kindness are prominent and that is true and rightfully placed in center stage.  Then Boston happened. And you know what, I am done. I am done allowing the sadness to win. The lesson of "look for the strawberries" solidified. In all things we must look for the good, we must stay focused on the uplifting we must stay connected.

And we have to find ways to laugh, reasons to laugh. So here are a few of the moments that living this life, riding in cars with these boys, have brought to me.

My youngest, my poky puppy, as I like to call him, has long existed on a different plain from the New England stress fast paced existence of myself and his brothers. I see this as a good thing for him. Although I have been known to threaten to glue his shoes to his feet since he can never find them from afternoon when he gets home from school til the next morning. And I do not understand the missing beats in time between a request and it's execution, where he seems frozen just considering what has been asked of him. Along with his mellow approach to involvement in life, is his mellow approach to personal hygiene. Not to the point of public acknowledgement, until now, but certainly an issue in the family. On a particular day when he decided to ignore my suggestion to shower, I beseech ed him, to at least put on some deodorant. That evening, while watching one of "our" shows, he told me he thought he was allergic to the deodorant, it had burned his pits for the first three periods of the day. I paused for a nanosecond to consider this possibility, then I was overcome with laughter. I shook, and could not speak, He started laughing to with contagion but didn't know what we were laughing at. When I was able to regain composure, I asked him to go look at what he put on, I was pretty sure it was the Icy/Hot roll on gel I had purchased for him at Christmas. It was.

Then there was the time I was picking up my poky puppy from an event down the road. We were gone no longer than 15 minutes. In that time his brothers decided to work together and rearrange his bedroom in it's entirety, and hide his most revered possessions in Easter eggs that they placed around the room. Their high jinx did not end there. I was an intended victim of the old, rubber band the spray nozzle at the kitchen sink prank, only it was facing #2 son when it went off, LOL!!! And the trusted, yet poorly executed plastic wrap over the toilet prank, he used blue painters tape to secure the weather resistant window plastic wrap to the toilet.(~ he couldn't find the plastic wrap) And finally his older brother walked into a wall of plastic wrap when going into his closet, not sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but it all had us all laughing and giddy with anticipation of the next prank. Until, until I found my missing make-up and cell phone charger in a bowl of jello on April 3rd.

So I leave you with this, find things to laugh about. Laughter is healing. Laughter is an anecdote. And when you don't see them, create them. Or I can send my boys over for some poorly executed stunts. That's be fun too.

Here & Now

I have not blogged since the events of 12/14/12. At times I have had thoughts but nothing coherent. I have had rants, but did not feel it would be a positive addition to anything. I have had grief and despair, but nothing you have not had yourself. Today I had a thought I think I can speak to.

In addition to the lives that were lost, we talk about the innocence that was lost. Children, adults, police, EMT's seeing things, hearing things no one should have to see and hear. Our collective hearts ache for them.
The changes in them, crawling back into the saftey of mom & dad's bed at night, fears, the erie quiet some have come to wear like a cloak. I have talked with countless people about the grey they feel, the numbness, being frozen, or the darkness of their despair. And now, children who never gave life a second thought worry.
Some worry "he" will come back, into their school, their home, their room. He is already in their heads & nightmares. When talking of stealing of innocence, I am struck with what he took was our "here & now".
While we wonder, fear and worry about what will happen in our schools, we are projecting to the future. When we can't get to sleep at night, and are tossing and turning we are having nightmares of the past and or worrying about the future.
In my posts on facebook in the days and weeks following the murders I started most with "Breathe". I knew I was holding my breath, I felt it was a safe assumption you were too. By forcing ourselves to breathe & count, we force ourselves to be in the Here & Now. We feel the air come in through our nose, feel our chest expand, hear the sound of our breathe, are counting in our head. All Here & Now. And in that moment we are not in fear, or memory, we are Here.
Here & Now is/are ( someone help me with that one) the only place happiness exists. The only place peace exists. Our children, going through their day absolutley LIVE in the Here & Now. And as they get older we admonish them for it " Don't you THINK about the consequences before you make that decision?" " Didn't you plan for your homework this weekend, when it was assigned on Friday?". Because,as adults, we strive to live in the here & now while planning for the future. It a tough skill.
But little kids LIVE there, and it's where they are supposed to be, completely absorbed in learning, listening, finger painting, kickball. We need to support them, and ourselves to get back to the Here & Now,
Joy is healing. Joy hangs out in the Here & Now. So does Laughter.
I am not always there. I am struggling, at times, to get back to my center as well. But if we follow the children, if we allow them to show us how to get back to Here & Now, we will all be better off.