Written two years ago, 2014. I write this stuff but don't know where to put it. Just found it again. For the record I'm in a different and better place now, fortunately. Thanks y'all!
I'm not finished
by Terri Mork Speirs
Recently we moved
our son’s bedroom to the basement, two floors down.
For all of his
previous 15 years, he had been sleeping in a room immediately next to us, my
husband Bob and me. Five homes and four cities, but always in a room next to
us. Now the boy is two flights of stairs away, in a room with a futon, a TV, an
egress window, and a single bed that barely fits his brawny six-foot frame.
(Really? Did I just use the word “brawny” to describe my child?) The room has
new dry wall and a shag area rug on a freshly painted cement floor, thanks to
Bob who has been painstakingly rehabbing the basement after the flood seven
years ago, when our son was in second grade. The completion of that room
coincided with our son’s launch into a more independent stage of life, a
full-fledged teenager. Fifteen.
The move signaled
his transition from a baby-faced cherub to a six-foot creature. His boyhood slip
sliding to manhood. Thus, my motherhood slip sliding to . . . where?
The first Saturday
morning my son emerged from his basement cave, unapologetic bedhead and
basketball shorts, I marveled at this lumbering man-child and that I was his
mother. My kid could easily be mistaken for an adult, I realized. Ambling into
the kitchen, his bare legs seemed an act of rebellion because it was November
and the house was cold. We live in an old four-square farm house in an Iowa
suburb. Winters are cold here, inside and out. For some reason the heat vents
in the lower level work best, maybe because they are newer, and my son’s room
is the most temperate in the house. His basketball shorts were not rebellion,
but another indicator that my son has moved somewhere else. He’s in the warm
part of the house, I’m in the cold part.
I thought of the
boys I knew in my childhood – uncles, brothers, friends’ brothers – boys who
lived in basements with painted cement for flooring, and how exotically male
they seemed to me as a young girl. They were ready for something that I was not,
I thought. They were ready to be grown up, or at least look the part. To accept
a bedroom in the basement with a painted floor equated maturity to live in a
nether world, the adult world. But now we have our very own
painted-cement-floored bedroom, accommodating our very own man-child.
Finally, I see
through the mysteries of male hood and teen boys.
My son favors
fruit loops for breakfast. And he likes chocolate milk. To him, his new room is
a pseudo apartment that needs a mini-fridge. To me, it’s a bribe to leverage.
He asserts liberation. I assert power.
“You join drama club,
I’ll buy you a mini-fridge,” I offer. So far, no deal. Mostly, he prefers to
skateboard with his friends and hibernate in his new subterranean space. He
keeps it simple, no drama, though he does participate in the church bell choir.
Not sure if that’s for the sake of joy or to please his parents.
My son’s move
downstairs was part of a greater shift in our family. In a matter of weeks, we
transitioned from a family of four to a family of one (two equals one when
schedules are off). Our singular nuclear family, perfectly symmetrical in
gender and number, has divided into distant parts.
My son (subject of
this story, teenager ground zero).
My daughter (off
to frosh year of college).
My husband (doing
his thing).
Me (undecided).
Before this atomic
split occurred, the upper bathroom/bedroom cluster of our old farmhouse teamed
with toothbrushes and schedules competing for the sole shower. Now, one child is
four states away, the other is two staircases away.
It’s quiet.
Suddenly, Bob and
I are stuck in a small wedge between parenthood and freedom, finding it
difficult to enjoy either. When we lean into parenthood, our only son spends
the night at a friend’s house or disappears downstairs. When we consider renewing
our dating life, we think of our son home alone and can’t enjoy a night out.
As for me, I am
stuck in the middle of motherhood and a sort of quasi post-motherhood, post-modern
motherhood, post-haste motherhood, post-mortem motherhood. Where am I? I can’t
think of a name to call it. What do you call it when you’ve felt like a harried
working-mother for 18 years and all of a sudden, you are no longer harried? It
went from harried to this (whatever I end up calling “this”), with no in between
time. Harried motherhood shown brightly but burned out fast, like a sparkler on
the Fourth of July. Burned erratically, then darkened.
Where do clever
children’s toys go after purchase? They’re crammed everywhere possible -- under
beds, in dresser drawers, on top of book shelves, behind closet doors. Pokémon
cards, baseball hats, stuffed animals, erector sets, legos, matchbox cars,
mountains of clothes that no longer fit. The move downstairs involved sorting
all my son’s things into two categories: what he wanted and what he didn’t.
Big-boy things made the cut to new teen room, and little-boy things stacked
in random piles of junk. Besides bonking myself on the side of my head for
buying all that stuff throughout the years, I got a bit sentimental.
“You had a good
boyhood, right?” I asked, realizing it was presumptuous of me. What a stupid
question to ask a polite son.
“Yes, it was
good.” That’s all he said.
My son’s childhood
is over. This stage of motherhood is done.
But I’m not
finished.
