the culprit on the day he left
Two years ago my first son Beau left for his freshman year at college and I lost my mojo. I can’t call it a crisis because I didn’t leave my husband, get a red convertible or run off to Mexico but I DID dance on a bar and I DID spend too many nights at work and I DID drink a beer or six too many some nights and I DID tell everyone who would listen that I had lost my mojo.
What my mojo had to do with my son leaving I still haven’t completely figured out.
If I wasn’t Beau’s young hip mother — then who was I?
Oh crap, I wasn’t young anymore, I wasn’t hip unless you are talking hip replacement sometime in the foreseeable future – and Beau didn’t need a mother; at least not in the same way he used to, and in case you didn’t know, I had another kid at home.
Who gets empty nest syndrome when the nest isn’t really empty?
But before you laugh at me, or preferably with me, let me tell you that when your child leaves home you feel like a balloon without a string, like a flower without a pot, like a fish without a bowl, like everything you ever knew or kept you anchored, like the thing that helped make you, well, you has just disappeared in the rear view mirror of your middle aged responsible car.
My adult life, which began abruptly at 20 in a college apartment bathroom with an EPT test and me, had always included a boy named Beau. Two years ago on August 16th he left and I was so busy trying to be strong for his little brother with the quivering chin that I didn’t grieve for at least a week.
Ten days later I would have given anything just to come home and find my oldest son still asleep on the couch in the middle of the afternoon with only one sock on.
Beau always woke up with one sock. Beau always left his wet towels in moldy heaps on his bedroom floor. Beau always put his dish in the dishwasher backwards.
Beau always wore the same black sweatshirt, always carried the same red messenger bag, and always wore the same black Adidas indoor soccer shoes.
Beau always wrote me the nicest notes when and if he remembered me on Mother’s day and Beau always said “You’re okay,” when I told him I loved him.
Now there was no Beau and there was no always.
I loved and missed achingly, every smelly deadpan sarcastic sweet part of him; every gene and cell and follicle of him.
And though nothing was really wrong, nothing was really right.
It was an entire year before I stopped wearing his high school gym shorts and believe you me my husband was happy to see them go because there is nothing less sexy than seeing your wife in your child’s clothing every night.
But when he was home this past November, I snuck a red shirt out of his laundry and hid it in my second drawer. My husband spied a new shirt in my six shirt rotation mix and said, “I know what you’re doing my dear.”
And that’s when I lied through my teeth.
“I got this shirt for you, babe, Beau never wears it and it’s your color. I don’t need it for myself. I’m good I am.”
I handed over sentimental, teddy bear- like, crazy mom item as if it offended me.
Thing is…after I surrendered it, I realized I was. Not offended, but good.
And just as quietly as it had come into my life that nasty little empty nest syndrome, causing mini mid life meltdown, major mojo thievery, snuck it’s way out bit by bit, little by little, sock by solo sock and I never even noticed.
My husband and every bar patron that saw me pull a “Coyote Ugly” on that magnificent wood runway were immensely relieved.
Turns out there are some questions we can never answer.
Like, why don’t we appreciate people more when we still have them around?
Like, why do we think doing silly things like dancing on bars, working our fingers to the bone and other avoidance techniques will make any difference in matters of the heart?
Like, what does the word mojo really mean and where oh where does that damn sock get off to?
About Rebecca Suder
