Myselfthink.com, one of Toronto’s Top 50 Blogs - https://blog.feedspot.com/toronto_blogs/#

(And sorry, looks like I accidentally took a month off)

It started with the braces coming off. I sat in the car, in the passenger seat because Kirby has his driver’s permit now, and waited in the rain while he went into the dentist. He donned his mask, CoVid 19 style, and set off for his appointment. I leaned back in my seat and aimlessly went through my phone, waiting. When he came back, he ripped off the mask and smiled a perfect smile, a bigger smile than he had cracked in five years, a grin that changed his whole face from childlike to chiseled. It felt like a light had been turned on in the car, and in his future. His cheekbones seemed higher, his skin clearer and his hands...were on the steering wheel...of a car.  He looked like a young man. Outside the car the rain poured down and the windows began to fog up as we fist bumped and looked a little closer at his face in the mirror; straight on, side view, half smile, full smile. Hmph. The rain kept hitting the windows, splatting like juicy bugs on a country road. The droplets slid down the glass and dropped into puddles around the car. At the same time, this milestone hit me and slipped down the curtain I kept drawn around my feelings until it splashed into the brimming buckets of emotion hidden in my chest cavity where I hadn’t suspected, or been warned, that feelings were piling up - the buckets ready to spill over. He started the car and ignited a series of realizations; Dexter, Kirby’s older brother, was graduating from high school in a week, during a pandemic, and Father’s Day would be coming, the first one without my dad, with his birthday a day later, the first one without a cake, or a kiss on the cheek. We pulled into the driveway and Kirby went in to show off his teeth. I went into the bedroom to sort myself out. My life had been anchored in calm waters for a long while, mostly steady, even during occasional winds, until now. Some deep down bottom feeding shadow had subtly unmoored my raft and I drifted naively into June 2020, head on into an unexpected wave. It was too late to grab my buckets - they were tipping.

I’ve never liked crying. Generally speaking, I prefer to laugh. That’s why I keep those buckets in my chest cavity and not at my feet or on the kitchen table. I don’t care to waste daily life feeling too much other than the good stuff, at the risk of the other, more complicated thoughts and feelings building up to the point of making a mess if I don’t check in. When Dexter got his braces off a year ago, it was a celebration full of selfies, hard apples, kettle corn and text messages to family. And then, shortly after, life carried on. No tears. This time with Kirby was not so simple and it caught me off guard. As an organised mother, teacher and card-carrying Virgo, I don’t do ‘caught-off-guard’ well.

Living and parenting in a pandemic has created its own invisible scars that for the most part I have been able to treat with a salve of fresh bread, gin, board games, bird watching, cottage time and hours lost in streaming services and weekly zoom calls with the girls. I had forgotten to notice that while the world stood still, time had continued to march on, almost aggressively, like an ice breaker across the Arctic Archipelago, tearing through life events, carelessly leaving shards of secret successes and exposing raw moments in its wake. I thought we would wait things out and get back to life precisely where we had left off.  

Wrong.

Without braces, Kirby no longer needs to cut up his apples, a real metaphor for all the new things he will soon tackle without needing his mother, the knife, to break things down into palatable chunks. I’m the next set of braces to come off. Let’s hope I’m less smelly and twisted when I’m ripped away. How had I not noticed his foot secretly on the gas long before he ever actually slipped behind the wheel? While I busied myself pretending to manage the family in these uncertain times, he had signed himself up for summer school, changed his own sleep schedule - after realizing this wasn’t just an extra long spring break and living like a vampire didn’t actually feel good, then quit drinking pop in a valiant effort to reduce his sugar intake, hence the clear skin. My sixteen, almost seventeen year old had already out-maneuvered Bridget Jones in figuring out his life. I can see myself now, standing in the corner of the kitchen, wringing my hands, slobbering in self-talk, not unlike Gargamel plotting against the Smurfs, reviewing Kirby’s routines and general conduct for new things to nag him about. He is easing me out of my own job and I have to figure out my last stronghold. Then I remember how he stands at the fridge, staring into the light as if the ring, you know, the ring, were perched on a milk carton in an alternate middle earth. He stands there as if contemplating whether to grab it or not, or text Bilbo Baggins for help, lest he start a war by touching it or anything else in the fridge. Beyond throwing some burgers or peameal bacon on the George Foreman Grill or scrambling a few eggs with crudely crumbled cheese, he remains somewhat needy in the food department - a hungry manchild scratching at stains on his shorts grunting for grub. He’s still mine, for a little while longer. A job and debit card has given him a taste of my own drug of choice, freedom, but there are still many things that require more work than he is willing to commit to. Steaming a vegetable falls well below most things on his to-do list, right after picking up clothes off the floor that smell like ass, even if they were never worn on an ass.  

The wipers worked feverishly to clear the windshield of the downpour as Kirby piloted us home, his new teeth the only light in the dreary skies. I followed his liquid blue eyes as he focused on the road ahead, my well being now in his hands. He gritted his perfect chompers in concentration as sweat formed on his fuzzy upper lip. For now at least, he prefers my debit card and meal plan, but oh how I wished he were still strapped safely in his car seat in the back instead of buckled into mine at the helm.

At home, the rain slowed to a rhythmic trickle and continued to dampen the soggy summer day. I wiped my cheeks then sat at the computer by the window to work on Dexter’s graduation video. The view through the streaked glass blurred the street below and it felt like the house was being pulled through a car wash. The patter of droplets threatened to put me to sleep after my solitary cry but I fought to stay alert and move on from my thoughts of Kirby aging out of my control ...I mean care. It was time to think about Dexter. Turned out, that was about as helpful to my mood as heat and wind on a small brush fire after a 3 month drought. Dexter was crossing the threshold into adulthood. Even if I could brace myself for the cresting wave on one side of my life raft, Kirby with his new smile and driver’s permit, I was still being assaulted on the other side by a storm that forced me to accept my newly minted high school graduate as a grown-up. The kid who used to participate in class debates and mock trials at school could now be called on for jury duty and lobbied for his vote in the next election. This can’t be? He has his whole life ahead of him and I can almost feel the chill from his shadow as I remain behind. The day we urged him to wobble toward our open arms as he took those first steps, we couldn’t possibly have pictured the moment he would eventually walk past us.  

In lieu of a ceremony during the pandemic, I spent hours assembling a surprise video for our graduate. We collected video messages from loved ones and friends congratulating him on finishing high school, layered it all over his favourite songs then topped it off with a montage of photos at the very end. The video ran 14 minutes long and was a ruthless reminder of the passage of time and the transformation of our wee boy from fleshy bundle to slender smarty-pants. Every photo I dug up begged me to dip my toe into a pool of memories until I was swimming laps in our family’s greatest hits. I edited the video at the speed of evolution, stopping constantly to relive each moment; the romance of living in the past far more alluring than exhaling and losing control of the present. Dexter has always been a special kid; a firefly in the dark, a wildflower growing through a crack in the cold hard cement. He has thankfully emerged a diamond, made stronger and more brilliant by hardship and small victories. At the age of two he sat on my lap and asked me to teach him to read, tired of me knowing all the answers - a hunger for the world already grumbling in his belly. From living in Paris to teaching himself Korean and forsaking all the delicious salty, fatty meat of his Costco lovin’ mama to become the lone pescatarian in the family, he’s been on his own path from day one. I only hope I can still see him from my lane when he gets to that fork in the road I know he is looking for.

The weather turned and I hoped my tears had finally dried up with the rain. 

Wrong again.

We picked a day to mark the graduation and gathered our bubble around the table, dressed for fun. We ate a celebratory dinner of greasy take out, on the fine china of course, then fired up the surprise video. I sat in the room with my favourite people, my favourite smells (takeout?), nearly suffocated by my favourite emotion - love (barf, I know). The video played and we watched Dexter laugh and cry, overcome by the faces and messages from his family and friends. The sun poured in the windows, helping us shine a light on our already bright boy. In the final montage, my eyes rested on a picture of my dad holding baby Dexter in his arms and I cracked, feeling far more fragile than our silver accented wedding dishes. I had seen the photo dozens of times before in my life and I sobbed every time I saw it as I made the video, but more than ever, in this moment, that cuddle between grandpa and grandson gripped me. I felt like a grain of jello in a cotton candy machine, swirling, bouncing and blowing up. I know it now - every so often a hand reaches into my life with a great cardboard cone and scoops up people, taking them away, leaving me behind to keep spinning. I loved my children more that day than any other and missed my dad so much I felt like a thousand pound weight in quicksand. He loved to drive and would have marveled at Kirby behind the wheel. He loved to laugh and would have had a good giggle at Dexter’s sense of adventure. And I would have been happy to still wonder if he was proud of me. 

People are leaving me. I always knew they would. I just thought it would feel different. I thought I would feel older when it all began to happen.  I feel no different than the day I graduated high school myself or took my parents Chevy Impala to the store, alone, minutes after getting my license. I’m still in awe of every day that goes by and look forward to the next. Just because I’ve lived more doesn’t mean I’m ready to live any less, or any smarter for that matter. 

My buckets are dry and I finally feel empty of tears, only slightly wary of nature’s cruel intent to refill. It was a long unsteady week and a crazy month. My kids are still far from truly leaving me but I know, the tides are turning. Our thirteen year old and the dog are getting an awful lot of attention these days. From time to time, I look ahead and wonder. I imagine not mothering 24 hours a day will feel like being a fish told to get out of the water and take a walk. How? Where will I go? What will I do?

Where will I go? (smile). What will I do? (bigger smile).

By Carol Sloan

Thank you for reading! If you would like to receive a notification every time there is a new post, please leave your email address below to subscribe. You are my favorite!