...snowfall and recall...

I waited for snow this morning.

I stood, hand up against the window, squinting into the darkness and hoping that the faint trace of white I saw on the road was fresh powder.  I held my cell phone in my hand...waiting...willing it to ring..every bit of my attention focused on the hope of a delayed opening.I paused there, at the window, in the dark of early morning, putting off the call of my kitchen and the pressing of coffee and the cooking of breakfast and wished so hard my forehead scrunched up.

But the phone never rang.

Soon enough, I had to admit defeat and move through the motions of our morning routine.  Soon enough, time to go, and the heavens mocked my wishing by sending down one tiny flake at a time as we headed down to the bus-stop.  Even now as I write this, the skies are teasing me...intermittent flakes float and spiral down past the window.

I stepped outside just a few moments ago and felt the bite of flakes on my cheek, that spark of burn from the ice.  I watched as a few tumbled about in the wind, finally settling down amongst the grass.  And I had a moment...one moment of memory...of the first time my son caught a snowflake on his mitten and squealed in delight as he realized its crystalline perfection.

Oh, I miss snow...that snow of his young years.  The snow we caught on our tongues and on our mittens.  The snow that forced us back inside to cuddle up with cocoa and books.

I've no use for the snow today.  No use for the flakes that fall now, too late for delayed openings or early dismissals.  I've no love of the snow that will, inevitably, come and make slop of the sidewalks and roadways.  No love of the snow that I'll spend hours shoveling.  There's no point in that snow.  No eager giggles as boots are laced and mismatched mittens located.  No bursting through the doorway to shake it all off and stand, dripping and exhausted, after playing tag-snowball pelting-sledding-snow angels...

No.

The snow is different now.

Now that  he's a teenager.

The snow is a possibility of another hour's sleep.  It's the chance to get an early start on homework and squeeze in some extra entertainment time.  It's an excuse to get him away from the computer...out into the fresh air...to shovel alongside me.

The flakes fall...the slightest bit heavier now...more substantial.  Each one, falling at an angle, buffeted by the wind.  Each snowflake different than the rest...just as my wishes have become.

I'll wish for snow again.  Snow that covers the world overnight and delays school in the morning.  Snow that lets me tuck the blankets back up under his chin and shush the cat.  Snow that sets his schedule back just far enough for a leisurely breakfast and an extra hug and a startled giggle when the snowflakes nip at our faces as we wait for the bus...

I'll wish for snow that reminds me of those other snows...

I'll wish for snow that wakes up the sleeping boy inside the young man...the snow that makes his mouth twitch up at the corners and his eyes sparkle and a little bit of the old 'him' sneak out to pelt me with snowballs...
                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                         ~Leanna

...(sun)rise and shine...

It is, as my son and I call it, the "season of sunrises".  The time of year when Nature does her very best to encourage us to look up, despite the cold and gray of wintry day to day.

The holiday season has fizzled out and the house seems stark and bare and cold  without a twinkling tree and the cheerful scattering of Christmas décor.  The tree, in a perfect explosion of needles, went out the door on Sunday as Epiphany drew to a close.   We gave it a suitable farewell, and thanked it for its service (because we're weird like that!) before dragging it off to its final resting place in the woods.  I hope it will, as its predecessors have done, become a home to the forest folk...the chipmunks and squirrels and, yes, even the creepy crawlies...as it returns slowly to where it came from and feeds a new life.

As for those pine needles?  I'll be vacuuming them up from corners till June!  

The ornaments have all been packed away carefully, leaving behind just a few glimmers in the form of my reindeer and Kosta Boda snowball candleholders.  (I'm perhaps a wee bit too proud of myself for my ever increasing collection of them...every single one found at a thrift store!)  Green and red and gold, replaced now with silver and blue and snowflakes.  And all those bits and pieces of detritus that we had hidden away, tucked into the closet to make room for holiday décor, have inched out bit by bit to take over every crevice and cranny.  Back again, the paperwork and the Transformers...the schoolbooks and the scratch-builds.  Back again, the permanently half-finished drawings and projects and books.  Back again, the disorder and dysfunction of our too-tiny abode.

Back, as well, is the schedule.  The drill-sergeant of Time and Order.  The early school mornings and overwhelming work loads and all the catching up and making up and responsibility.  The sucker punch, after a slow slide into rest and relaxation, of a full calendar and alarm clocks. 

Here we are...here we all are...but a few days into January, and I am already weary of it.  I'm already counting down the days until spring...ticking them off in my head and on the kitchen calendar.  Planning ahead...way ahead...and trying my damnedest to ignore the here and now.

It's cold and wet and grey outside.  There are far too many windows around me, letting all that gloom inside.  The picture window in the front room...the very one that looked so festive a few days ago...looks out on a world that's barren.  Empty tree branches, empty bushes...nothing but sharp edges and thorns and brown.  Even the poor garland I've left on the window casing seems to be fading away.  And the only relief comes when I've a pot of something simmering in the kitchen and the windows fog up with steam, temporarily blocking the view.  

I make the best of it.  I think so.  I try.  I keep the kitchen warm and bubbly with casseroles and soups and warm beverages by the gallon.  (I'd chance a guess that we're better hydrated this time of year than any other, simply because I'm forever making tea to chase the cold away!)  I pull out all the stops, comfort-wise.  The softest blankets re-emerge from storage.  Throws hang at the ready for shoulders to snug.  The fuzzy socks and slippers wait for tired feet or chilly toes.  Candles puff up cheerily on the tables, scenting the air and chasing shadows.

I make the best of it...or at the very least, I try to keep the cold and gray outside where it belongs.

But sometimes, in this month that never moves past gloom, it seems the cold and gray sneak in when I'm not watching...following me in as I latch the door behind me...finding the perfect hiding spot deep within my very bones.  I, too, become cold and gray.

I, like those barren branches, grow sharp edges and thorns.  I start to become brittle.

By end of day I feel wrung out...lifeless...sapped of energy and purpose and colour.  Something about the sharp bite of winter air just drains me, no matter my efforts to fill up on happy.  The early darkness signals a turning-off in my brain.  Creativity, off.  Productivity, off.

T.V., on.

(No, seriously...what's that about?  I know full well the house is full of all the same engaging entertainments...books, boardgames, craft supplies...now, as it is the rest of the year.  But come January it's as though my brain blocks it out.)

Too. Tired. Must. T.V.

So we slump into zombie mode, staring at the screen, bundled up and bored.

So I close out each night, laying in bed, wondering what's wrong with me that I didn't push harder for something more active and engaging.  Disgusted that I let the cold get the better of me.


And then morning comes.

Not with the alarm that shatters the silence of a still-dark room.  Not with the coffee made in the dim glow of the stove light.  Not with the cooking of breakfast or the laying out of clothes, or even the rousing of son.

No.

Morning comes with the sunrise.

It sparks in the far horizon, glinting off the glass of that picture window in the front room.  It draws my attention from the manufactured brightness of the lamps and ceiling lights I've turned on.

Morning calls me over.  And I direct my son's gaze toward its arrival.

"Oh.  Look. Look there.  Isn't it beautiful?",  I whisper.
Most days he murmurs in assent and stops  a while to look with me, before returning to the siren call of hot breakfast and strong coffee.

I'll stop a little longer there, wherever my tracks were halted.  Stop and breathe it in...chest expanding to draw in the fresh air of a new day...shoulders rising to attention...turning to bask in the glow and feel the warmth that my eyes tell me is just a little bit further down the mountain.

Nature boasts, showing off with a blaze of glory.  Flying in the face of all that darkness and setting the world on fire.  She forces her way out, one flash of glorious colour after another.  They settle in and paint a watercolour against the stark relief of black tree trunks and branches.

And in those moments...those few minutes of sunrise...She energizes us...She wakes us up and gives us reason to find the colour in the day...She reminds us to shine...

~Leanna

...he's got the whole world in his hands...

I posted a photo to my social media accounts the other day.  A photo of my son, holding a dish with two waffle bowls stacked atop one another, with the comment "He's got the whole world in his hands..."  I'll ask his permission later, and paste it in if allowed.  

The waffle bowl maker is new to our household.  A Christmas gift.  An idyllic daydream of homemade gluten-free waffle bowls to hold fruit salads and ice cream sundaes, sparked by an ad in a weekly flier.  A "must have" that we didn't know we needed until we used it the first time. 

P.s.-It's the Dash Deluxe Waffle Bowl Maker, available at Bed Bath and Beyond. 
Okay, so first things first.... #notanad  #notasponsoredpost #shillfree

Now that we've cleared that up...

It's not about the waffle bowl maker...or the waffle bowl.  It's not about food at all.  

It's about that photo, and the comment I wrote with it.  "He's got the whole world in his hands..."

It got me thinking...about the words..."the whole world"..."in his hands"...  

We say of our children that they've:

"The world on a string"

"Endless possibilities"

"Limitless opportunities"

"Open doors"

We tell them that they can dare to dream.

But as I said, that photo got me thinking.  It reminded me, oddly enough, of a video that's gone viral (or at least I think it has) where a simple footrace becomes a lesson in privilege as those participants who don't meet certain criteria aren't permitted to move forward towards the goal.  They're all allowed to run, of course, when the buzzer sounds...but the starting point is different for each individual with a select few...a select privileged few...far closer to the finish line right from the start.  For those few, it won't take talent or strength or stamina to win.  For those few, it won't even take speed.  They're so close they can't help but stumble across the finish line far sooner than those left behind at the start.  And why?  Why are those few granted that privilege?  In the video, it's because of what they were born into.  A certain financial status.  A two-parent home.  A family history of educational achievement.  In other words...

Status. 

In the case of those privileged few, they were allowed to move closer to the finish line regardless of any achievement on their end, but rather because of things they had no control over.  Simply put, they were given a jumpstart by the mere accident of their birth.

In counterpoint, there were runners left behind.  Some all the way back at the initial start point.  They, too, were subject to the folly of rules that decided their fate based solely on circumstance.  Sure, they could still participate.  They could still give it their all.  They might even be the fastest runners that day.  But, barring some miraculous event, no matter their talents or strength or stamina, they could not win.  They couldn't make up in skill, the benefit of that jumpstart.  No matter their speed, they were too far behind to ever catch all the way up...too far behind to be able to overtake those privileged few...too far behind to have a fair chance...

Privilege has been on my mind lately.  Privilege and status and circumstance.

And worth.

Or, rather, the judgment of worthiness and what parameters define it.

It's been on my mind as I try to level the playing field in some small way, for two children whose circumstance...whose accident of birth...hasn't afforded them much, if any, privilege.

It's been on my mind as I try to come up with meaningful, beneficial ways to increase their privilege. 

It's been on my mind as I can't help but compare their opportunities, or lack thereof, to those my son has had simply because he was born to me.  

I think, as a mother, it's nigh on unavoidable to not feel the heart bleed a bit for children who don't have what you have been able to provide for yours.

And then I posted a cute photo with a twee comment and sparked a whole set of inter-related queries in my own mind.  Because...

It's not true.

He doesn't.

Regardless of his talent or strength or stamina.  Regardless of his skill.

Regardless of his daring to dream.

He doesn't have the world in his hands.

There are limits...on possibilities, on opportunities, on open doors...

Limits based solely on his circumstance.

Limitations, that not only slow his race but in some cases, completely impede it.

Limitations, that define the course of his life by whatever he is privileged enough to have been born into, be raised up in, learn or earn.  

Limitations that define the scope of his dreams around his circumstance.

Years ago, I told his middle school case manager that one of my biggest parenting goals was to make his world as big as possible.  I want him to experience as much of life as is possible.  I want him to see everything the world has to offer...new places, new faces, new stories...   I want to introduce him to the unfamiliar at every turn.  I want him to never feel limited by our finances or location or status.  I want for him to feel limitless.

I want for him to feel privileged despite his circumstance.

I want his dreams to be undefined...to be free...to grow so much bigger than the walls of the world we live in...so much bigger than the lines on the map that define where we've been...so much bigger than my bank account or my time or my knowledge and abilities and skills and creativity.

I want him to be privileged beyond the circumstance of having me for a mother.

To be undefined by what I have made of this life.  To be able to expand far past what I have been able to provide for him.

I want him to have a level playing field.  To have the same starting line.  To have the same chance.

I want it.

But it's not reality.

It's not attainable, just for the wanting...the wishing.

He's growing up, confined by the dollar amount in my bank account and the walls of our apartment and the symptoms of his autism and the experiences I am too afraid to pursue.  He's growing up, limited by me.

No matter how big I try to make his world, there's so much more out there beyond what I can provide for him or introduce him to or set him on the path of.

There's accident of birth and circumstance and status and privilege.  There are doors that he'll never even know are closed, because they're behind walls he'll never see over.

He knows something of privilege.

He knows that we are poor in comparison to some and rich in comparison to others.  He knows we help others often.  He knows sometimes we've needed help.

He has two friends whose status far exceed ours.  He's hung out with them at their homes and come home, both marveling and morose at the notion that our whole apartment could easily fit in a bathroom or walk-in closet or...

That what in his world must be treated as a rare indulgence is commonplace to them.

That what I must save up to be able to afford is an easy, pocket-change purchase to them.

He lives and attends school in an area steeped in status.  New money and mcMansions interspersed with upper-middle-class comforts.  Children raised by nannies.  Young people who, at 14 and 15, have a sense of entitlement that leaves little room for empathy or inclusion.

 He's been picked on for not wearing the trendy sneakers.  He's been made fun of because his gym shorts aren't a brand label.

He competes for gpa rankings and academic honours with students whose privilege affords them private tutors and testing practice.

They've never even seen his starting line, much less been there.

He knows something of privilege.

He knows well the accident of right-time/right-place that put a 3d printer in his workspace so he could jumpstart his dream business.

He knows the trips we've taken and items we've purchased and entertainments we've pursued.

He knows the security of a roof over his head, food on the table, clothes on his body, heat and hot water.  He knows the certainty of those clothes being clean and well-cared for and seasonally appropriate. He knows that he'll have shoes that fit properly and school supplies that serve his needs and medicines that assuage and prevent and heal.  He knows that he will not go hungry.

He knows the comfort of a mother who is always available to him.  The fearlessness that comes from having a parent who advocates for him at every turn.  The confidence that comes from her...me...always making him a priority.  

He knows something of privilege.

He hasn't been merciless to a parent strung out on drugs.  He hasn't been abandoned or neglected.  He's never been abused by a parent who struggles with emotional and mental disorders.   He hasn't been pulled from his home by CPS.  He hasn't worried that he'll lose his family.  He's never been concerned about when he'll get his next meal or if there will be clothing to wear or if he can sleep without being bitten by pests.  He doesn't have to fear eviction.

He knows that he is privileged.

And he knows that he is not.

He's got the whole world in his hands...the world he knows...the one I have painstakingly crafted and created for him.  He's got the world of my resources and abilities...of my circumstances in his hands.

But you and I both know that world is always, forever being defined and limited by others...by those whose privilege makes them feel they are entitled to judge his worth. 

I hope he dares to dream far beyond those judgments and those who make them.

I hope he skips past privilege and creates his own starting line.

I hope he never has to spend a moment 'catching up' to those who've been privileged enough to start out ahead...and if that isn't possible, I hope he's not exhausted by the race he started running before them.

And I hope that my efforts to afford those two children some privilege of their own will succeed. 

~Leanna

Permission, granted!

And, if you haven't seen it, here's the video that I mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBQx8FmOT_0&fbclid=IwAR0oMhI06SwG4Cp55JCzNucc5cYnlUqeXGdsQpaLGZb7lB_D6K_PZjbnEK0

...it can stay, I don't have to - part 2...

Remember that time I wrote about The Wall?

Well, I did what I set out to do.

I stopped it from being the focal point, and went ahead and worked my way around it.

In fact, I jumped right on  that task the following day.

(Ikea to the rescue!)

We took our measurements, noting just how much room it was taking up.  Carefully lining up the tape to see how far it protruded into our space.  Top to bottom.  Side to side.  Deepest crevice to sharpest point.  The rock wall just sat there, immovable and implacable.   Up close and personal...noting each inch...I saw its ugliness.  Gray and brown rocks of no consequence or complemement.  Some glossy.  Others lusterless.   Dusty film adhered to that sticky coating of time or humidity or sealant...indeterminate.  I felt the crumbling plaster holding it together.  I saw chips in its grim face...where someone else-sometime else...must have tried to move around it or past it, and come up short.  The crash of one solid object into another...unyielding.  Fracture lines crazed around those chips...a testament to both its lifelong strength and eventual weakness.  

I saw its ugliness.

And didn't care.

Already, just by measuring it, I had rendered it defunct.

The Wall-In the Living Room-With the Measuring Tape.

I win! (Remember the game 'Clue'?)

We sprinted in the homestretch, down the corridors of Ikea.  Rounding each corner with purpose.  Eyeing up each shelf and cabinet...debating dimensions...focusing first on form, then on function.

Finally settling our sights on the one.  The Brusali cabinet, in white...

Discussed. Dissected. Decided.

Done.

Home we came with his new cabinet, my new office drawers (and more than a few other bits and pieces, because...Ikea?!?) and a concrete plan: he to organize, I to assemble.

It's fixed now.  The Wall.  Fixed in the spayed/neutered sense of the word.  Its there...sort of...but completely overshadowed.  There, but unnoticed.

The cabinet pulls the room together.  Brings order to the space.  Closed doors hide his toolboxes and supplies.  Shelves bear the weight of education...binders and files and textbooks organized, just so.   And high up on the top shelf, his current favourite Transformers hold court.

(The rest are banished to storage bins until we move!)

The room makes sense now.  It's ready for the life that happens in it.

The Wall is stopped.  I took it's place and made space from it...space for him.  

***The Wall is still there.  The Wall is still ugly.  But somehow, remarkably, it's nigh on invisible behind the sensible and serviceable piece that now stands before it...behind the life I built beyond it.

~Leanna

...here for the highs and the lows and the highschool...

We waited for the bus to arrive this morning, on this first day of a new school year.

We waited, and walked, and talked.

I'd forgotten our tradition, you see. The one where I read to him from "The Hardy Boys".  We've been inching our way through the series since kindergarten, a chapter or so per day as we pace back and forth in the heat of early fall ~ the crisp cool of autumn ~ the thin, breath-stealing chill of winter ~ and so on.  Some days we're running late and I barely get in a sentence before the bus squeals to a stop.  Others it's a chapter and then some, words rushing by as my watch ticks off the minutes and we wonder if the driver forgot us.

I'll remember tomorrow, no doubt. I've already laid a fresh new book out next to the door, so I can't miss it.  Now I just have to figure out where I "cleaned up and organized" away our bookmarks to, and I'll be good to go!

At any rate, this morning I forgot.  So instead of reading and listening, we walked in an ever-widening circle, talking our way through his first-day jitters and all the empty platitudes of encouragement that I could only hope he wouldn't actually need to rely on but put breath and sound to anyway.  He let me ramble on about all the new coming his way today, interrupting to redirect the conversation to his latest design ideas.   I interrupted right back, steering us into the "call me...email me...google hangout me" if anything goes wrong.   

I looked up at him in the middle of our conversation. Looked all the way up...all 6'4" from my 5'8" vantage and thought to myself "what a marvel it is to have raised up this young man who I look up to!" and I must have smiled at the thought because he asked me why I was smiling. 

I said this:

"Because I have been the lucky one."

I.  Have been.  The lucky one.

I, alone...have been the wingwoman ~ the ride along ~ the plus one ~ the teammate ~ the encourager ~ the consoler ~ the counsel giver ~ the rage receiver ~ the advocate ~ the single solitary only parent.  

The mother.

The lucky one.

Here through the lows, and here for the highs.  Here for the jeers and tears and hugs.  Here for the meltdowns that left scars on my shins.  Here for the 3am sleepwalking and the night terrors that fed my insomnia.  Here for the homework headaches and the teacher tribulations.   The sensory calamities, the volume catastrophes and the sleepless nights.  Here for every single hug and every single smile and every single laugh...every honest, gut-jiggling, jaw-cracking laugh.  Here for the parenting.  Here for the motherhood.  The one lucky enough to be here.

I've been here all along.

I haven't missed a thing.

He starts high school today. 

And I am overjoyed and heartbroken, in awe and nerve-wracked....I am all those things that all we mothers are on the first days of every new chapter.  I am full of memory, of everything that's come before.

I will spend my day missing him, trying to distract myself with work. I will wonder if he's found a familiar face or a quiet space.  I'll be preoccupied by concerns and worries and nerves.  I'll miss him.

And he?

He will be himself. Wholly himself, just as he always is.  As his autism frees him up to be.  Brave and bold.  Secure in his sense of self.  Determined to use all the strategies he's learned to cope with the noise and the crowd and the pace and the newness of it all.

He will be overwhelmed, but he won't let it show.  He will be curious, but keep his questions silent.  He will squeeze himself down into a small version of himself and try to blend in, unseen and unnoticed.  He will shut down and shut out and shut off.  He will cope, to the best of his ability. 

And when he comes home, I will be here, as I always am...smile on face, arms wide open...

And he will wait until the bus pulls round the corner and we are far beyond the sightline of the other kids  to rush into those arms and tell me, as he has every day of every year..."I missed you."

~Leanna

...the Freshman, 15...

It started with a facebook post, yesterday...

My alarm chimed at 4:30am ("Never Enough" from The Greatest Showman as a riff on my lack of sleep) and I groped around in the dark, desperate to silence it.  The book I had given up on just an hour or so prior took a nosedive off my nightstand and Katja Noel (she of the 9 lives and counting) scowled at me from the nest she'd made between my knees.  "Shhh!", I hissed at her and the book and the carpet and alarm.  She gave me "the look": the rolled eyes/eyebrow scowl that only teenage girls and cats (and teenage girl cats) can do, and allowed me to untangle myself from her bed. 

Remarkably, I made it from bed to kitchen with nary a misstep.  Remarkable, when you take into consideration that the floor is a veritable minefield of Transformers, Transformers pieces, and all those incomprehensibly sharp little discards of my in-house design engineer's scratch builds.  

(And this after...yes, after...cleaning it all up mid-afternoon the day before.)

Now, where was I?

Ah, yes, the kitchen.  4:35am-ish...

...where I stood in front of an open refrigerator in a complete fog...contemplating lasagna.

Yes, lasagna.

And cake.

More specifically, cheesecake.

Trying my damndest to remember the ingredients.

Then the fog cleared a bit and my brain woke up and remembered...

Breakfast. 

(Not lasagna or cheesecake, sadly.)

 

Coffee made...ouch, too hot, from reheating...the handle of my mug leaving a red mark on my finger.

Into the kitchen proper then....ingredients out, utensils ready, food prep underway.

While this and then that were frying and boiling, quick scroll through the phone for updates and emails. Silent groan at the inbox. Sip...calm...repeat. Fresh press of coffee, tea to steep, OJ plus probiotics whisked (ugh), water. Plating food, cutting fruit, tray ready. 

The phone gave off a warning buzz...vibrating a second before alarm #2 went off.  This one...audio clip from a Transformers soundtrack, with its own name: "the son also rises". 

(I name my alarms.  I'm quirky like that.)

I raise the lights from dark to dim and gently pull the cover from his face.  Whisper my good morning, then repeat it...louder by degrees.  He grimaces, eyes still closed.  Frown lines in the brow.  Slants open eyelids and clutches his bedding to him, burying his face in Henry Raccoon.  Something...some indistinguishable utterance...all consonants, I think.

"Good morning, love."

He's annoyed at my chipper...growls a "why are you being so cheerful?" in my direction, so I drop the pretense and hand over his coffee.

Breakfast...refills...shower...alarms every two minutes as I knock on the bathroom door signaling him to move on to the next step: soak, soap, rinse, shampoo, rinse, face, rinse, etc... Double check that the clothes are laid out-had to spend 1/2 hour last night going over options. Knock...2 minutes...knock...2 minutes...knock...

Finally the squeal of the water turning off and the "I love you, Mami" as he comes out. It's a question, not a statement.

"I love you, Mami?"

Meant to elicit the same response... 

I love you more. I love you the most. 

Not possible. Possible.

Not probable. Probable.

Inconceivable. Conceivable.

Incomprehensible. Prehensibibibi-bibbidy-bobbity-boo-I-Love-You!

 

I wash the breakfast dishes while he gets ready. Print out a second copy of today's schedule and write in the class name, room and teacher next to each time slot. Tear the house apart looking for his keyfob: the one that has a pill dispenser for his rescue remedy and another for his earplugs. MIA!!! Why didn't I do this last night?  Where did I hide all my replacements?  Wait...one last spot I didn't look...Found it! (Pat myself on the back for being a genius...ha!)  Onto the table it goes.  Check the list, then check it twice...Santa style?  

He's ready-ish...still teeth to brush (sensory processing dysfunction, anyone?) and hair to brush (ditto).  I have him squat down so I can reach the top.  Put the brush away and close the cabinet, giving myself the once over in the mirror and frowning.  How is there sleep in my eyes when I didn't sleep?

Alarm #3 calls from wherever I last left my phone.  The "Tokyo Ghoul remix" elicits a grin from him. The alarm name, "Beginning of the end", gets me a pair of rolled eyes.

We grab the stack I've put together by the door: pad, pen, glasses case, key fob, water bottle...walk down the driveway and contemplate: the meaning of life, the fear of navigating new hallways, and the ongoing existence of the same kids who bullied him for the past 9 years.   I check my phone far too frequently...noting every passing minute past the scheduled bus stop time. Worrying that he's been skipped. It's happened before.  Worrying that we got the time wrong.  Hasn't happened yet.  He chatters on about his latest design ideas, filling the empty morning with sound to drown out his nervousness. I run through my checklist mentally, then verbally. Step by step directions for him.

Brakes squeal as the bus pulls up across the street. I grab his hand...motherhood 101 makes me firmly grip him and say "look both ways" as though he's still a toddler.  He lets me get away with it, or maybe doesn't even notice.  No "Mooooooom...I'm 15/too old for this/etc..."  We make our way across, aware of the annoyed drivers stopped in their morning commute.  Aware that we are, momentarily, a spectacle.  He puts one foot on the bottom step, then turns..quickly...to peck me on the cheek...before disappearing into the shadows of the bus.   I feel the warmth his face left on mine.  The driver mumbles at me...something about when and where to expect him later on. I smile, nod, wave...walk hurriedly back across the street to wave and smile as the bus pulls away.   Wondering if it's ok, my waving.  Wondering if someone else is laughing at him because I'm waving.  My hand finally drops...sagging....my smile drops, too. I feel...empty...

One foot in front of the other...I walk...1/2 mile down, 1/2 mile back. The world is quiet. Just my footsteps on this stretch of road.   I see the golden glow of morning sun on the leaves and grasses. I stop and wait a while, watching a cardinal in the bush as he watches me.

I see a doe in the distance, back by the tree line...with her young one.   I see my shadow on the road and remember when his barely came up to my knee. My arms itch for a moment, the way they used to when he was a baby and I missed him while at work.

I touch my cheek, that spot where he pecked me goodbye.

I wish time would stop.  Would spin in reverse.  Let me live it again...longer, deeper.

He'll be home, soon enough. And I've things to do before the bus returns. Back up the drive and in to the house.  Picking up the bits and pieces of a busy morning.  Log in to my work-site while I refill my coffee. All the while my head is with him...my heart is with him. He leaves, and I split in two...

He'll be home, soon enough. With a list of things we've yet to buy. Teacher pages.  Supplies needed. Ideas he's had. Drawings he's scribbled while there. 

15.

Today.

At Freshmen Orientation.

15, and on to high school.

And my arms itch at the thought.

If I close my eyes he's a baby again.  What wonder!

...a toddler...a kindergartner...a 6th grader...a guest speaker at Rutgers...

If I close my eyes, he's all the boys he's been before, all the boys I've loved so.

And when I open them...he's all the ones he's yet to become.

He'll be home, soon enough.  Orientation but a 3 hour day.  I'll be there at the bus stop, waiting. 

He'll come home...different, changed, grown.  Some new information learned and processed.  Some new experience filed away in that computer of a brain of his.

The mantle of Freshman secure on his shoulders. 

~Leanna