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July 31, 2005
Wherin I experience seperation anxiety...
I put my son on a train today. My 13 year old son. On a big, fast-moving, tin-can of death. Ok, so maybe it wasn't a tin-can of death but it was big and it was fast. And he looked so small and helpless standing next to it.
He's not small, really. He's a 5'7", 160 lbs., broad-shouldered, prepubescent boy. I KNOW, imagine how huge he'll end up! But I'm not talking size here. Or even his age. He's been through a lot in his 13 years. He tends to take things very personally. He's as soft-hearted as they come and he loves his Mom, sometimes to the point where I just want to say "Cut it out, will ya?! I need oxygen!!!"
I know I should be grateful he still loves me. It won't be long until he won't want anything to do with me. Maybe we'll be different. Maybe we can stay as close as we've always been through his teen years. I hope so.
Tonight, though, I wish I wasn't so close to him. When he hugged me on the platform, I could feel his heart beating. He hugged me harder than he usually does. He hugged me three times and looked back six times, as a matter of fact. He had tears in his eyes. I was glad I was wearing my sunglasses. When he turned to me one last time before going up the stairs and he showed me sign-language for "I Love You", I lost it.
I know ... I'm a total wimp.
But I love my son. And he has gone on a trip without me. In this scary, crazy world we live in now, I'm terrified soemthing bigger than him will swallow him whole.
Oh crap, what have I done?? I should be with him. I couldn't go with him. I didn't want him to go. That is a story for another day.
Right now, he is gone. The train has left Washington, DC toward Boston, toward his birthplace. He'll be spending 8 days in New Hampshire. With my family. I've asked him to keep a diary so that I'll know what he did on his trip. I figure he'll use the diary to vent his feelings and it may end up being his lifeline to sanity in the swirling vortex that is my family.
They arrive in Boston in 10 hours. He was born in Massachusetts but he hasn't been back in 10 years. I would have liked to show him Boston Garden, where I watched the Celtics and many, many concerts. But Boston Garden doesn't exist anymore. My Massachusetts doesn't exist anymore. I don't belong up there ... and neither does he.
This is my diary of how I cope with him being gone. Or not. Time will tell.
