| Subject: Letters to Samson - 14 Separation Anxiety |
Author:
Holly
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 08:28:15 04/25/06 Tue
In reply to:
Holly
's message, "Letters to Samson - 1" on 18:59:32 06/04/05 Sat
I have started this one probably seven or eight times, and I just don't know what to say. You ....
You are my little hero. And it has to stop.
On my birthday, after we had eaten cake and Chuck E. Cheese himself (herself? - yeah, most likely) had come by to wave, after I had opened my presents (a video card and a garnet bracelet), you sidled up to me and asked, "So, did you open all your presents?"
I said, "Yup!"
"Oops! I think there might be one more," and you're digging in your pocket and pulling out a tiny package. "Wanna see what it is?"
Like I cared. I was so happy just watching you - what a handsome little man you are... how smooth you are... that a wad of gum wrapped in birthday paper would have sent me over the moon.
It wasn't a wad of gum. A sterling filagreed jade ring - you found a finger for it, and every other day or so since then, you've checked to make sure I am wearing it.
The up side of oedipus. My Knight.
The down side, or the other side, is that you somehow have gotten the idea that you are responsible for me. If I am home, you do not want to leave. You think I might die.
And you don't like your dad so much. You think he's trying to take you away from me. And, as I said before, you don't want to go. As in, kicking screaming, curling up in a ball on the floor don't want to go.
This from a kid who had almost no tantrums from two to four.
I don't know what other mothers' sons go through. But I think chronic illness (mine) has ripped you off. It's ripped off all of us. You don't want to go to preschool? I don't want you to go to preschool. I want to take you on the train to Boston, bum around the public gardens, check out every playground within a hundred miles.
I want to teach you to ride. I want to surprise visit your care providers and make sure they're treating you the way I want you treated. I want to put you in the car and drive you down to New York (okay, so gas prices are a problem). I want....
I want to nurture your sense of adventure. I want you to feel safe in the world. And as much as I love being with you, I want you to be okay with leaving. I want you to know that I will always be here when you're ready to come back. I want you to learn how to figure out what you want. What you really want.
Because I don't think it's to be curled up in a ball crying your eyes out.
Your dad and I were pretty dead-assed broke before you were born. He was bringing home piece-work from a book publisher, and every night, we'd sit at the dining room table, taping old poems to new pieces of paper for use in a new anthology. You were an active little guy, always moving moving moving, and as your due date got closer and closer, I was stunned and ashamed to find myself worried that I would be lonely with you outside me.
Many of the poems were familiars - because anthology is bred from anthology, but also because the best words stay with you, even if you forget them for long stretches - and I felt blessed to be reminded of them right as I was going into motherhood and would need all the wisdom I could squeeze together. (Intermission while I laugh at my pretentious ass.)
Okay, so as your dad and I got into the "African American" section of the new anthology, my fingers taped themselves to "Harlem," by Langston Hughes:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sag
like a heavy load?
Or does it explode?
I wanted to tape that poem to your bedroom wall, right next to one of the glow in the dark shooting stars. But I didn't. In fact, I forgot all about it until last night, when I was lying next to you, waiting for that moment before you fell asleep, so that I could sneak off and let you do that last part alone...
like a big boy...
even though I'd love to lie there and watch you dream.
I love you.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
