Category: Fragile Life
The Balls It Takes to Parent Teens
I sit in the parking lot of the 7’Eleven and bang my head on the steering wheel, wishing, for once, that I had a cell phone so that I could call for back up.
“Help, help, help,” I say to no one– hoping that someone will magically pull up beside me in this parking lot and tell me what to do. Maybe my doctor.
“Help, help, help,” I repeat, until a truck pulls up beside me and the driver stares at me strangely. I worry that he saw me banging my head and then I stare right back at him, wondering if there’s any chance that he could be helpful. (If only I had a flat tire.)
I want to restart the car because I’m shivering from the stress, but I don’t want to pollute the environment for 5 minutes of comfort.
“Breathe, breathe, breathe,” I tell myself, and I try.
The boys are in line at the check out so I don’t have much time to figure out what to say next. “Remain present, remain present, ” I say–trying to be present–while simultaneously freaking out.
I think about pulling my teen aside and consulting him before they both get back into the car. But that would be bad parenting form, right? I have to be the grown up, right? (I don’t want to be. This is a stupid job.)
Instead I tell my son that Pepsi and cheap chocolate aren’t great choices right before bed, let alone any other time. (This customary commentary on food choices seems out of place–even for me– given the topic at hand.)
“TMI!” I wanted to shout on the ride home from the game when his buddy unraveled his life before me.
I hadn’t expected a detailed confession, let alone extraneous ones.
“What do I say, what do I say?” I asked myself over and over again. But I had used up all my courage with the original prompt that had launched me into this deep end of parenting.
It was my own fault. Actually, it was my nose’s fault. I have incredibly strong olfactory senses–and that’s what I told this friend of my son’s when he got into my car.
“Did I ever tell you that I can smell just about anything– on anybody?” I say.
The car gets quiet. And then it just spills out of him–so softly– that I have to tilt my head toward the back seat to catch what he’s saying.
After the stop at 7’Eleven, we turn toward small talk but it just feels flat and forced. Mostly we sit without talking–which is a surreal experience with two teens in the car. What are they thinking? I wonder.
“You know I care about you, right?” I finally say aloud to this boy I have known– since he was a boy. Now he looks more like a man. “You know this puts you at risk. You’re too young,” I tell him.
He isn’t apologetic or dismissive or anything that would give me something to push back on. He is simply transparent, just like me–and we fall silent again.
It seems like everyone in the car has aged in the twenty minutes since I picked them up at the school.
“Talk to your parents,” I say as we pull up to his house. “I’ll follow up with them this weekend.”
I can tell that I’ve just dropped a bomb on him with this request. Actually, it feels like the weight of a hundred years is on his spirit as he gets out of the car and drags himself toward his front door. I wonder if I should have gone in with him. He seems so tender.
As we back out of the driveway, my son launches into weekend plans and I put up my hand. “I can’t talk about anything, right now,” I say, and he uncharacteristically silences himself without another word.
At the bottom of the road, I pull over and flop my head onto the steering wheel, finally taking a deep breath. “I want to quit,” I say. “This is too hard.”
I’m not sure if this confession of mine evokes compassion or concern or something worse so I start driving again. You can do this, I tell myself.
You just did.
A Mother’s Words
It was last December when our lives and Jesse’s were intertwined in love and hope and prayers.
And it was just after the holidays when Jesse’s body did the unspeakable.
And on a deeply snowy day like today, my family got in the car and drove to town to sit with Jesse–on the Eve of his Burial.
Months later his beautiful curved headstone was set with words from a poem that Jesse had written himself when he was in highschool.
The Architecture
Lines around space
but in it.
I am confronted by
the simplistic organization.Ordered picture frames of
nows and thens, heres and theres,Is our universe
organized in this moment?
with insides and outs?Or only the instant when
the frame opens.And the maple leaf floats inside
resting delicately as if to say,This frame is not broken.
The picture is just now complete.JJL 2005
On the occasion of this “unveiling,” Jesse’s most gracious mother, Lisa, wrote and spoke the following words “on this sad, sad day of laying one part of this journey to rest; as the rest of the journey continues.”
With thoughts of mothers, Mary, Goddess, sons and loss, I share Lisa’s tender words with you here:
The Architect
Jesse came into our lives on a crisp and blazing October day. He was radiant and comfortable in his little body: a true Vermont child. I was enchanted from the first instant I looked into his deep eyes. He would always awaken with a sweet smile, his neck arching back and to the side in a slow feline stretch; a gesture he never lost.
Of course I already knew him. At some time in the late summer I had taken to seeing him in every shooting star above. I don’t speak metaphorically here. Ed and I slept under a skylight and I literally saw shooting stars as I was carrying him into late term…settling into the dream-awakening reality of welcoming this strange new being, turning and tapping inside of me. I heard his echoing voice in the stars. I hear him now.
You all knew / know Jesse. I don’t have to say much by way of expanding your knowledge. But I have thought of how I would convey the preciousness of Jesse to some new inquiry.
“Tell me about your son”…
Well. He was not a child of this time in many ways. Or perhaps more correctly, Jesse was a person, from a very young age, who lived just a little bit outside of time. I like to say a nineteenth century man, grown up from a Renaissance child… but I’m not sure anymore of the specific histories of his imagination and bearing.
He just came in with a broader brush than most, with a wiser heart, and caring concern for the aesthetics of refinement. Jesse never wore a pair of jeans, even on his toddler legs. When he discovered button down shirts, he never donned another sweatshirt. He wore a tie even on the hottest days of summer. And he had a trunk of costumes in velvet and brocade, tunics and capes that he dressed up in as part of his play – well beyond when most kids go there. He loved the sensuality of these exotic garments against his body and the freedom of characterizations that he could explore while traipsing with his courtly, or maybe troubadour airs.
But these were the trappings really, just the surface dressings, of a mind that loved to look backward in history for the mappings of internal order and quiet composition. Jesse spent hours looking at pictures of the world that we came from. As if he were seeking a personal trail back through time. As if he knew that his life would not belong here for long.
I also would mention his compassion and inherent empathy. I don’t ever remember his personal ire rising at anyone. Well, there was that one young man who charmed away two consecutive girlfriends, and those cops in New Jersey once… But more than most, his whole life, Jesse willingly, even automatically, (but never haphazardly), stepped into the perspectives of those around him – melding and mending the world from his large heart. He let me be me completely. That seems like such a small thing, but think about it. He allowed all of us to be perfectly who we are.
And one more encapsulation… born from this, and the core compass of an irregular and spirited being. Jesse allowed Jesse to be perfectly who he was. His self-possession was astounding to me. From the first, he lived into his unfolding with one part surety, one part self-humor, very rare glimmers of self-angst, and a boatload of flair and wit. He might have been too sure of his intellect at times in his coming of age, but he was formed by humility at others, and he never needed anyone to show him how to be Jesse. That is rare.
In the end, his courage was rare as well. I don’t know how he found that courage. There was even extra for me. I know he wanted to live so very much into his independent, adult life. I know he wanted friends and a wife and children, a life of focused challenge and beauty all around him. I’m so sorry not to have seen that. But his body crumbled outside of the range of being, and he fearlessly left to encounter all the realms of consciousness that he gallivants in now. He is always expanding, always beside us, always Jesse. I can’t go on without him – without this compass bearing.
And I could not have survived this unbearable loss without him either.
(reprinted with permission by the author, Lisa McCoy)
Please send your LIGHT to Lisa and family as the time of Jesse’s passing to ALL that IS returns again.
The Empty Nest Diary 