Mothers Worry

I wrote this shortly after my son left to go to college, a time that is hard on mothers.

Mothers Worry

The floor of his room seemed abnormally flat without the crumpled levis, wadded socks, smelly running shoes. The surfboard on his bed, a fiberglass Pinnochhio with stickers, was no substitute for a real boy.

I felt like I sent him off to college unprepared. I should have known to send sheets, blankets, and a pillow. I should have bought him socks, underwear, t-shirts. They should have been in neat piles on the bed. As it was, I helplessly watched him make his own stack of t-shirts, shorts, and levis. He couldn’t find his shaving kit, the nifty black one from Sonoma Outfitters I bought him when he was a sophomore and starting to shave. I should have been able to find it for him.

He was taking the essentials, including his sleeping bag, would return in two weeks for Labor Day weekend. My hovering annoyed him.

His first call from California Maritime Academy was the Monday night he arrived. That’s when he said we owed five hundred dollars for the uniform deposit, and I said no we didn’t. I was sure I had paid that bill in June. While my husband was on the phone with him, I found the cancelled check. I had forgotten that the deposit was a thousand dollars, not five hundred.

He told us, yes, he had had a roommate, a twenty-six year old Russian from St. Petersburg, but, no, now he didn’t have a roommate. The Russian had decided he would room with his fellow Russian That night he was by himself. The uniform only partially fit. He said, “It’s confusing.”

He didn’t call again until Saturday. We were glad to hear his voice, but it was small, almost sullen. From that conversation we learned that the freshmen were up at 6:00, mopping the hallways and cleaning the bathrooms in the dorm. As he spoke I could hear his voice echoing in the empty corridor. I thought of his vacant bedroom upstairs. Why didn’t I insist he take sheets, blankets, a pillow?

I said to him, “Why don’t you go see your aunt tomorrow? Do you have her phone number? Here, I’ll give it to you. Do you have a pencil? Really. You should go.” He didn’t have a pencil, and he didn’t want to go to my sister’s. I think that the idea of negotiating more city traffic and getting lost somewhere between Vallejo and Orinda in order to get a free meal and the prospect of more unwanted advice was more than he could handle. When I hung up, my husband said, “You were on him. Relax. He’ll be fine. Cal Maritime was his choice, remember?”

I felt terrible. Why couldn’t I just listen? When was I going to get parenting right? It was too late.

I know I am not the only parent to go through this. Last fall, my friend talked about how sad she was that her eldest son was gone; how teary she felt. At the time, I thought she sounded indulgent. After all, he was attending UC Santa Cruz, no more than a three-hour drive, and was, in fact, coming home the next weekend for his birthday. Don’t be such a ninny, I thought, listening to her lamentations as she stood in the doorway of my office. We are all fortunate. We have jobs. They are middle-class kids. This transition is hopeful: for education, a career, and even some adventures. I owe my friend an apology. The first weeks of my son’s leave-taking felt more like a funeral than a celebration.

Although I immediately felt my shortcomings as a packer and an organizer, that was nothing compared with my regrets about his psychological preparation. What else had I forgotten, been careless about? The winds of remorse blew through my dreams for several nights after he left.

The weather was a big factor in the stories of the births of both our children. Each was born in a storm. The March night before our son was born, it rained so hard three embankments on our country lane caved in, and, when we arrived, the Mendocino Coast Hospital was on auxiliary power. The January morning of our daughter’s birth a freak tornado blew down the barn.

The emotional weather of those years was stormy, too. Once I had been fighting with my husband, fled the house half crying and our son, not even four, stumbled down the hill after me. I remember turning him away like a pup. “Go back! Go back to the house. Go away!” I can hear myself saying those words and see his confusion.

Another time we were in front of the bank in Mendocino My father had sent a two hundred dollar check to his grandson, but I needed the money. It was all part of the turbulence of those days. My husband and I were combative, selfish, immature; there was often secrecy about money. No excuse can soften the memory of my seven-year old son wailing helplessly, “That’s my money.”

Loneliness. Betrayal. I was his first teacher. Now he is gone. No wonder it has felt like the death of someone dearly loved but not reconciled with. No wonder setting three plates at the dinner table has seemed so sad and wrong.

Yet I have chastened myself for these doleful thoughts, just as I silently reprimanded my friend. After all, he is alive and well, apprehensive but ready for this next phase of his life, and so much about our lives, his life, has been healthy and good. Furthermore, I realize the “should have’s” could go on forever. As an elderly friend says, “You can’t saw sawdust.”

One morning a few days before my son left, I was getting out the ingredients for his favorite cake, while he sat nearby at the kitchen counter eating cereal. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. I must have been frowning.

“I’m just thinking of all that I haven’t told you,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said, smiling as he shut the refrigerator door. “I already know everything.”