Friday, April 26, 2013

The Streak

There is this certain pop song out that plays ALL the time on the radio.  The kids and I made a game out of it.  We were on like a four week streak of us being in the car and the song would  start playing.  By the second note you could see us cheer, hit the ceiling of the car and shout "THE STREAK CONTINUES!!!"  We had gone on a long car trip, one where you have to change the radio station multiple times, and each time we changed the station THAT song would come on.  EVERY SINGLE TIME.  It was equally annoying and fun all at the same time.  We played a guessing game to see how long we'd have to wait to hear the song again.  Since I spend more time in car some days my kids would ask if I heard the song at all, and when I said 'yes!" they'd laugh then I told them how many times I heard the song they'd laugh some more.  It became our inside joke.
Yesterday ended the streak.  I was sad.  The kids forgot to ask about the song.  I was even sadder.  I don't particularly like this song, it's okay.  I don't like the meaning of the song, I just like what it meant to us.  A point of connect.  No matter what we are feeling at a moment in time towards life or each other that song comes on and it was all out the car window.  The morning argument forgotten, we cheer and slap the ceiling and shout and laugh together.
We'll have to find a new inside joke now.  This streak is over,  we have to find a new thing to keep together.  To keep us together.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Son

You know those super awesome quotes superimposed onto stock photos people post on Facebook everyday?  I love them.  And I am not saying that in a super sarcastic way.  Because they are super.  Uplifting spiritual guidance in jpeg form. Rocking.  This one was 'shared' 1255 times, it so prophetic and speaks to me right here in this exact moment when I am idly wasting time on this interweb.

I saw this one superimposed picture/quote today about how you are 'his first love and his first kiss and his first friend and he calls you 'mom.' That's really nice in a creepy kind of Oedipus-complex kind of way.
I have a son and as much as I love him I will never think that I am owed his first kiss or his first love.

Weirdly now we are in that stage where we have to find this new way to love each other.  Because kissing and cuddling are not the ways of the world.  Hugging is okay in a private-in the-house-don't-let-my-friends-see-you-do-it-kind of way.  Saying 'I love you' happens long before we enter the school drop-off zone.  Because mushy mommy love is "EMBARRASSING."

I do other things now.  I still hug and kiss, a lot less, but I make it work. We play baseball and yell insulting comments to each other.  He tells me I throw like a girl and I tell him he throws like a diarrhea grandpa.  Because diarrhea is always funny.  And isn't cool to have a mom that lets you say diarrhea in a completely non-medical kind of way?  And he tells me I'm funny.  And so bad I want to tell him 'I love you too.' But that's too mushy you know.  So I just tell him he's funnier than dada's fart on a vinyl seat. 

I am trusting him more.  I let him stay home while I run to the store to get that one thing.  Because what says love more than allowing your kid to stay home while you have many anxiety attacks in the less than a mile trip to the store??
I keep reminding myself that I was home by myself at that age.  South side of Chicago.  Rule: No one in, no one out.  Don't answer the phone unless it's mom calling, leaving a message on our brand new cassette activated answering machine.  And there wasn't cell phones.  Or there was cell phones but you had to carry them in a pack and they weighed more than a small baby.
I was home alone without the nifty technological advances we are blessed with today and I lived!

 I let him stay home.  I run as quick as I can to the store.  Moving hell and high water.  Tripping babies in my way to get that one thing so I can quickly make it home to the son I love.
Sometimes, every once in awhile,  he will call me on the cellphone and asks when I will be back from my quick run.  And I so bad want to say 'I love you too son.'
And sometimes I do.