Red, white and blue. Today is the day for it, don’t you think?
No red here (though I love the color). No white either. (Too easy to spill, to soil, to stain.)
Blue?
Make that a yes.
Why?
It started with a phone call from my kid. My college student.
“When’s your flight?” I ask.
“I have to check,” he says.
“Wait. You have the ticket, don’t you?”
Now I’m the one who has to check. Yup. He’s right. I page through emails. I forward the necessary itinerary and boarding passes. It’s the Homecoming, Part Deux. He was here, he flew off, he’s returning.
Soon.
“Train from the airport?
“Yeah.”
“Couch?”
“Yup.”
He likes to position himself in a central area of our small home, also known as the living room sofa. And for the most part, I enjoy it when he sleeps there. It’s an agreeable spot and he’s a considerate kid; he asked permission, and I said yes.
As I’m about to run through the litany of food options in preparation for grocery shopping prior to his arrival, the pause is longer than usual. A mother knows her pauses. This one is ominous.
Then: “I have to tell you something.”
Never a good opening phrase coming from your college kid.
“I couldn’t get a job,” he says.
This isn’t a surprise. I know he tried. We had discussed a Plan A and a Plan B, and even his targeted openings were few, unpublicized, most likely unpaid.
“You can still do freelance logo and graphic work if you can get it,” I say, which was the Plan C he had in mind.
I add: “I could also really use your help with some driving.”
I explain that a friend of the family is having surgery and will need assistance going back and forth to physical therapy. If my son isn’t working, he can chauffeur her twice a week and run my errands. He can help move some furniture, then put doors on a small room I’d like to clear out and re-purpose. In other words, he can be my architecturally-oriented handyman.
Silence.
It may be the Fourth of July, but I’m not feeling sparkly or celebratory. Something more is going on.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I can’t drive right now,” he says.
I’ve got that same sinking feeling that struck when a pal of his called from a hospital Emergency Room. That was the summer after he graduated from high school, and only ten days before he was to fly off to college.
Hard lessons. So much is learned through hard lessons. Whatever it is this time, at least he’s talking.
“What’s wrong?”
Another pause.
“I broke my hand.”
“You what?”
“I would appreciate it if you were not upset.”
But I am upset.
“Your drawing hand?”
“Yeah.”
It’s my turn to speak, but I don’t know whether to voice curiosity, concern, or anger.
“How did you do it?”
“I punched a wall.”
I tell myself to take a deep breath, to stay calm, and not to open my mouth until I’m certain I won’t breathe fire.
“What did the doctor say?”
“It’s in a cast. The cast needs to come off in a couple of weeks. He says it will heal without a problem.”
Then he starts: “I put my fist through a wall but it’s kind of a funny story really, and I know it was dumb, but it was just something that happened and it has to do with a friend, and she hit her head and made a dent in the wall so she said but she didn’t actually dent the wall because the material was too strong, and I was just trying to show her that was the case. The small hole was there already, so to prove it, I punched the wall.”
Pause.
“Now there are two holes in the wall,” he says. “The one she didn’t make, and the one I did.”
Right.
Architecture students. They’re constantly dreaming, designing, tweaking, trying, constructing, configuring, engaging, experimenting. So what was this – an interactive demonstration in materials usage?
He’s trying to reassure me – or head off maternal discontent, also known as a lecture. “It’s no big deal,” he continues. “I’ll be fine and I’m using the time to do other productive things.”
He elaborates on the ambiguous Other Productive Things and despite my annoyance, it appears that he has indeed identified several activities he can pursue that are productive, or at the least, a good learning experience. He’s become a creative problem-solver and for that, I’m grateful. I’ll be even more grateful if there’s no permanent damage to the hand, and for the moment, I can’t bring myself to ask for more detail.
I console myself with the fact that he sounds chipper and he says he’s in no pain. Then again, as my son’s schooling, his living, and his passions have to do with what his right hand can accomplish – both hands if you count his love of piano – the situation is disconcerting.
I ask a few more questions about what he can do, and he informs me he’s sketching even with the cast on, including a series of drawings with a pencil propped against the plaster.
My son isn’t blue, but I am.
And yes, when he arrives in a few days and I see his smile, it will pass.
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We just know, don’t we? I always sense when something is going on with my kids and I usually end up saying, JUST TELL ME. Mother’s instinct. Sounds like everything will be just fine…and this will be a story you laugh over one day. Have a happy holiday!
You are so right, Pam. On all counts! (Happy Fourth!)
Sorry to hear about your son’s hand — glad he’s not in pain and that the damage isn’t worse than it sounds. Happy Fourth, and may the visit home be a memorable one in less stressful ways too!
Thanks, CT. Ah, the entertainments of parenthood, right? 🙂 And yes, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Happy holiday!
Hi Wolf,
I’m experiencing a bit of blue here as well. First off, we have pouring rain for weather, so none of the usual outside activities. But more to the point, those kids… things have changed a lot with both of mine recently, and I am trying to change my own mind-set as well. I’m trying to let go a bit more. To realize that their transitions, their pain, their disappointments, like their many accomplishments are theirs, not mine. Yes, we are always here for them, but as one of them — who is trying to create a bit of distance — recently told me, “you guys (his father and me) should be off having fun.”
Actually, blue doesn’t quite cover it, maybe black and blue.
Black and blue. Oh Judith, that’s so hard. I have difficulty imagining you hanging on too tightly, but of course, the things we feel and the ways we express those feelings are varied and so personal. (I can hear when just a few words out of my mouth triggers something in one of my boys, in part because they know me so well. Sometimes it’s like they’re conveying “drop it” in shorthand, and then I have to tell myself they’re not kids, and so I should.)
As for the suggestion for you and your husband to go off and have fun more… would that help, a little? You’re such an exquisite writer. Could you write about this situation in some way? Many of us need to deal with it – or will.
Hopefully, it was a simple break and the cast will do the trick. I know plenty of people who can drive with a cast on an arm. I think he can still help you drive. Most people drive with one hand anyway. 🙂
This is a quintessential creative-growing-up story, variations of which I have experienced with my 29-year-old son (a professional dancer and furniture designer/maker). I’m sorry it is punctuated by an injury to your son’s hand, and, as one who has spent the last week learning how complex can be the workings of the human hand, I encourage you to have a good hand surgeon (who is not overly prone to recommend surgical solutions) take a look at it (just because it is his drawing hand). Please don’t let that suggestion worry you; it is just for a second opinion re what the treating physician apparently saw as a straightforward, fully-healable injury. Kudos to you for being tuned in to your son and yet not overbearing…that can be a most difficult tightrope (especially when you realize the potential significance of something that he may not yet see). With the most obvious options closed to him for the summer, your son may well come up with activities (and/or time to think) that is/are even more valuable to him. You know all this; I am just letting you know, during this time before you see your son’s smile, that you are not alone in these particular parental blues.