Nineteen On the Nineteenth

I got pregnant at age 39. Swiftly calculating months (all those accounting classes being put to use), I realized that I was going to be 40 years old before my first child was even born. By my nearest calculation, several of my high school friends were already grandparents. I would be retirement age by the time he/she graduated from college. I'd be ready to be put to pasture, waiting for someone to push me around the old folks home, and looking forward to tapioca Sunday. So, at age 40 years, seven weeks, I gave birth to a premature ball of fire that hasn't slowed down yet.

The kid oozed personality from day one, and it wasn't just a momma's opinion. He was a happy, smiley, laughing little boy, even when at three and a half, he battled chicken pox, a double ear infection, strep throat, and scarletina....all at the same time. The kid charmed people so much, his pediatrician, who had four of her own, arranged play dates with him and her children. This sort of popularity taught him early the value of charm, and it was a lesson he has never forgotten. This is best illustrated by a sentence I have heard from just about every teacher the boy has had - from kindergarten to high school...."It's impossible to stay mad at Eric." Look, I have no desire to know what he did to arouse your wrath because I'll probably be able to counter with 'you think *that's* bad,", but please, do not give in to the urge to let him charm you out of it. I have enough problems keeping my own wrath at home.

The cuteness for teachers started in first grade when he wrote a Valentine's poem to his father and I, which in part reads: "pupet shows are good but not as good as my momy and dady. there bestis parents ever. the thing that loves my heart the best is my parents mom and dad. my mom and dad ar the bestis parents I ever new. they were there when I was born and that ment a lot to me." Kid has no idea how I tried to be elsewhere when he was born. His father took the manly way out and stood outside the hospital and smoked until it was over. I tried like heck to join him, but they said my presence was required. I’m still doubting that.

Consider also, the time when Eric was about eight and wanted to go down the street and play with the neighborhood boys. I told him, sure.....just as soon as he cleaned his room. He marched upstairs in a huff, mumbling and grumbling something about me being the meanest mom on the block, which I took as the highest form of compliment one can take from an eight year old. It wasn't long, however until he was back downstairs, informing me that we needed to have a serious discussion. Imagine my surprise, when he informed me that he was sick and tired of doing everything around the house and I needed to pitch in and do my share. He cleaned his room. He cleaned his bathroom. He cleaned the living room, the family room, and the table after dinner. All I ever did was sit on the deck, drink wine and read. I dare you to try and keep a straight face while being lectured on your slothful ways by a 60 pound, blond, blue-eyed he-devil on his high horse.

It wasn't long after that when I was baking some cookies for school and he got completely ticked off when I would not let him eat any, because I was responsible for a certain number and I wasn't going to let him ruin my count. He left in his usual huff. Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rang, and I answered it, oven mitts on, and spatula in hand. On the front porch was my son, dressed in his Sunday go to meetin' clothes (complete with clip-on tie.) He held a clipboard that had a piece of paper on it and he checked things off as he asked me questions...all in a very serious manner. He first verified the address to make sure he was at the correct house. Then he asked if I was the lady of the house, and was my name Sue Jochens? I verified his suppositions, and he went on, still reading from his clipboard. "I'm from the bakery and your neighbors say you make very good chocolate chip cookies and we're looking for a new baker. Do you have any I could test?" He got his cookie and I still have the piece of paper which has our address, my name, and "good cookies" written on it in his childish scrawl.

Eric has taught me so much, like the value of a bike helmet that saved him from serious head injury when he hit a hole and went flying over the top of his bike. A broken tooth that could be capped is nothing compared to what would have happened if he had had his way that day and gone off without his helmet.

Patience...my goodness has that boy taught me patience. I have serious tongue scars from biting it to keep my mouth shut over the years. He taught me that even with the help of a patient mother, a man cannot be trained to aim accurately in the bathroom, or to put the toilet seat down when he is finished not aiming. There is a funny story there too. He was maybe four and put off the potty break too long, because when he finally ran into the bathroom and dropped his pants (four-year-olds don't have zippers), it was not to be controlled, and as it sprayed all over the bathroom, you could hear him talk to it, I'm assuming trying to coax the little thing into his hand so he could pretend to aim. It was all for naught. He never did grab hold of the little sucker. I only made him clean the parts of the bathroom he could reach, as punishment for putting it off too long. When we moved, we had to paint the ceiling.

This blog is already too long, and I’m still reminiscing about elementary school. I guess I should wrap this up and save other things for other times.

At 4:33 this morning, Eric turned 19 years old. He has grown into a fine young man who I only occasionally want to throttle, and of whom I am proud of all the time. He's kind, considerate, smart, perceptive, and funny as all get out. If there was a place to go to where I could pick any son ever to be mine, I would choose him in a heartbeat. I am the luckiest mother in the world, and look forward to seeing what sort of man he becomes. I'm sure he'll be a charmer that you just can't stay mad at. Happy Birthday, Bud. I love you more than you’ll ever know.

Friday the Thirteenth Lives

The kid is temporarily living at home and commuting to college because of a pot-smoking roomate who doesn't know the meaning of the words 'personal property' or 'boundaries.' My son has early class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so is showering by 6:30 so he can head out by 7 or 7:15. The husband also likes to shower and leave at that time. The water heater is 50 gallons. Two males, taking showers simultaneously, can empty a fifty gallon water heater in about six seconds flat, starting them both off on the wrong foot. They know it, and still can't seem to coordinate between themselves. The man has the leisure to adjust his going-in time, so he could easily wait until the kid has been out for 30 minutes, but nooooooo. The man who runs his own company isn't that smart. He comes upstairs from watching early moring financial news, walks past the kid's bathroom where you can clearly hear the shower running, and head straight back for his own shower, never giving it a second thought until they both scream with shock at the suddenly ice cold water.

This morning, they finally both got out of the house (I'm telelworking today) and I settled in hoping for a quiet day because I woke up with a killer headache. Just before eight, the garage door opened. Scared the holy crap out of me, because the kid should have been arriving at school about then, and the man should have long since been at the office. Unfortunately, I was in the pretty little girls room when the door opened, and the only mechanism of self defense was a half empty roll of toilet paper, a jar of liquid soap, and a towel. Armed with the soap (I could aim the pump at the intruder's eyes, blinding him with cocoa butter additives) I opened the bathroom door just as the door to the garage opened, and the husband hollered, "It's just me." They were cooking lunch at his office today, and since he's the boss, he had to go to the store on his way in to get the food. After leaving there, he realized he forgot tomato paste, so he stopped back home to get a can. It served to show me though, that soap in the eyes would not necessarily work as an effective weapon, because if the intruder wore glasses, it would just smear the eyewear up and not harm the intruder.

Can of tomato paste in hand,the man left, and looking at the clock, I started getting nervous about the kid. He always texts when he gets there, and he was about 20 minutes late. Just as I picked up my cell to check on him I got a text: "here. people drive stupid. getting breakfast at e's and going to class.' I thanked him for letting me know he was safe, and wished him a good day. I went back to my own office work (which had not being going smoothly before the two interruptions.) An hour and 15 minutes later I get another text from the kid" 'lost my keys. turning in math homework, telling professor, and going looking for them.

Gee, that shouldn't be too hard....there are only 27,000 students on campus, and it's only one key. I texted back that if he didn't find them, I'd get the spares and drive to Lawrence with them. Over the next 30 minutes, the texts kept coming, each one angrier than the last. They might be in his car. He had to go back and get something and doesn't remember them after that. They could be on the bus he was on. They could be in his dorm room because he stopped in there for a minute. My thought, although I didn't say it with him in the mood he was in) was that since he carried them in his pocket on a 700 foot lanyard trailing like a kite tail, someone grabbed them when he passed by and they were out joyriding the Kansas prairies or commiting heinous felonies in my son's new Civic. For the next 20 minutes, while I saw that scenario going down, the kid keeps texting about the stupid slow campus bus driver, the people taking too long to get on and off the bus, and the state his room was in when he stopped in earlier.

The texts stop. I try to get some more work done. New text. "they were in car. car not locked. i was lucky." No shit Sherlock. You didn't lock your brand new car with probably $200 worth of CD's, your iPod, and the set of loud bass speakers you saved for two years to get? I kept my mouth (and texting fingers) shut and agreeed, yes he was lucky. He hopped the bus and then went back to the class he was missing. I went back to work.

An hour and a half ago, when he should have been in the last 30 minutes of his last class of the day, I hear those loud speakers boomboom their way through the neighborhood, become silent in front of my house, followed by the garage door opening again. Five feet eight inches of sheer anger plow into the house, the backpack gets flung to the floor and he starts ranting. Traffic, late to class, professor lectured him on tardiness, dropped lunch plate in cafeteria, hat blew off head and run over by bus, broken date, fell off curb and pulled hamstring...the litany of mishaps went on and on, finishing with bank account had $1 and his gas light came on just as he entered the neighborhood.

Mind you, it was all personal. Life was against him, and only him. It was out to get him while everyone else was having a hunky dory time. I just looked at him and quoted Mark Knopfler - some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug. Then I told him it was Friday the 13th. He was walking up the stairs to his room when I said those things. He slipped and fell, pulling the hamstring further. He started ranting and raving even more, telling me I had no idea what it was like to have such a bad day, and it seemed like it was becoming my fault.

During a break for breath, I looked at him and said, "Well, I have to go to your grandfather's and stepgrandmother's tonight for dinner with my brothers."

He surrendered immediately. "You win. My life is great."

I'm still trying to figure out an out for myself.

The Reality of Friday Night

Friday nights just ain’t what they used to be. When I was a kid, Friday night meant I could stay up late. Play outside after dark. Catch lightning bugs in the summer and wow...I can’t remember winter Friday nights. None at all. They must have been boring.

In high school, Friday nights meant a football or basketball game to go cheer at and yell myself hoarse. Bus trips when we played teams an hour or more away were the best. Nothing’s more electric than a bus full of hyperactive teenage pep club girls singing Little Bunny Foo Foo for forty miles, and Roll Over (there was 10 in the bed and the little one said, roll over, roll over) for another 50. Those bus drivers must have had nerves a steel (or a bottle of Jack under the seat.) When there were no games (or in summer) Friday nights were spent on the phone or at slumber parties. There was always something going on on Friday nights.

College.....anyone who has ever been to college doesn’t need a rundown here. I recall many nights in a pizza bar in Kirksville, Missouri, drinking beer, eating pizza and singing dirty lyrics to clean songs. We were young and away from home, after all. It was an obligation.

After college, Friday nights were spent on dates, or with a group of people in clubs and bars. After closing them, we’d all head for breakfast and roll home around 5 or 6am. As we started pairing off into young marrieds, or steady couples, Friday nights were spent at each others’ homes, firing up the grill in summer, and watching movies or listening to music in winter. We muddled along that way for years, gradually shifting over to Friday nights at the in-laws when friends started breaking up, moving 1,000 miles away, or spending their Friday nights at their children’s’ sports/school activities.

At the tender age of 40, I became a new mother and Friday nights changed forever. I no longer looked forward to any social activity because I was just plain dog-tired and wanted to stay home and get whatever little nap that I could. Soon the kid was in school and we were caught up in that swirl of Friday night sports/school activities, and stayed busy that way until this year when the kid went off to college. We were free! Friday nights meant we could go anywhere, do anything, and had no responsibility to be at a cross country meet at 8 the next morning, or getting ready to host the team for their Friday night, load-up-on-carbs dinner. There was no need to stick around the house in case 400 teenagers showed up on the spur of the moment. Friday nights, for the first time in forever, belonged to us.

So, how have we spent those well earned hours of freedom? The man has sat in the garage, the only place other than the great outdoors he’s allowed to smoke. He calls it his apartment. He has a chair, a refrigerator, a table for his beer can, and a boombox. I’ve spent Friday nights since the kid left, reading, watching old movies, and turning in early. We’d take a trip or go out to dinner, but we send all our spare change to the college bursar, who monthly, thanks us kindly and asks for another contribution towards the remaining balance.

I send him the last contribution February 28, 2013. The very next Friday, I’m going to do something wild and crazy. I have three and a half years to think of what.

Proof Positive

I spent a pretty pissy weekend purely because of infantile behavior on my own part. I was missing out on something I really wanted to do but couldn't afford, and another, equally as good substitute fell through at the last moment. So, instead of looking forward to doing something different or just relaxing, I decided to be a baby and pout. Mature, huh? Yep. I can knock 55 years off my age without hardly trying.

Anyway, I moped around much of Sunday, not doing much of anything at all (I did make the bed at least), until it came time to fix supper. Got the potato dish in the oven, prepared the asparagus, and the beef, and after time enough for the potatoes to be almost cooked, went to the deck to start the grill. It was then I took one look west and realized something....I may have nearly cursed him a time or two over the lack of weekend excitement, but God had better things in mind for me, starting with that sunset.

When Eric was a little tyke, we once checked out a library book about a little girl in a perpetual bad mood. Nothing could get her out of it, and they tried it all, until one day she was jumping on her bed in a fit of anger, and started giggling. Turns out, no one can stay in a bad mood while jumping on a bed. It became my go-to for when the kid was grumpy....he was sentenced to five minutes of jumping on the bed. He always came out laughing, bad mood magically erased.

God gave adults sunsets because we're too big to jump on beds without breaking them.

Seriously, there I was, conniving ways to make the family pay for a crappy mood of my own making, determined to make the most of my self-wallowing misery, when I walked out the door, and was confronted with one of the most wonderful sights a body could ever imagine. I was mesmerized. Over the course of the next 15 or 20 minutes, the sky went from pale yellows and oranges, to deep, deep orange, to an intense pink, followed by a purple that was not to be believed, before fading off into shades of gray. As I watched the transformation, I felt the tension leaving my shoulders and back. My mood lightened to the point of euphoria. I actually started to smile. Next thing you know, I was thanking the Big Guy for the sunset, for my family, my home, my job (scary huh?), my friends, my country, my life. One little setting of the sun, and I was full of God's love instead of self-pity.

Amazing how He can kick our butts without saying a word. Thanks, Dude...I needed that.

Benjamin Franklin said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, but I say a sunset is all the proof we need.

Hating the Local Grocery

I need to go. I have a menu all made for the week, and all the ingredients listed in aisle order, and yet I sit here, putting it off, like I do every week. What is it about the store that I dislike so much? Is it the people who block the aisles while talking to someone they haven't seen since, oh, say, last night? Is it the kids running wild thru the store? Maybe it's the moms who put their sticky little darling with dirty shoes, and wet pull-ups in the part of the buggy where I put the food that feeds my family. It could be that the only grocery store in a 10 mile radius is usually either out of the advertised specials or don't carry them in the first place, since the ads cover all their stores in a huge area. I don't even want to get into their inability to carry items common in today's recipes: arugula, sea salt, creme fraiche, grape tomatoes that are fresh enough to not have wrinkled skin, a peach that doesn't rot in two days, fresh herbs, a decent piece of meat....I could go on but I'd probably just burst a blood vessel in my head as my blood pressure climbs higher and higher as I put off the trip. I'm a small town girl with NYC fresh market dreams, and only a lousy p.o.s. Price Chopper in view.