A year and change

His room doesn’t have a thermostat, but it feels like a balmy 78 degrees each time I knock on his door, tentatively cracking it open a sliver to inquire about the state of his awakening.

Sometimes he’s still sleeping. A starfish splayed out over the mattress; tangled in bed linens.

Often, he is already wide awake.

His whole life is in there … somewhere. The first thing I see when I tip my head inside is a grammar school diorama balanced at an awkward angle on top of a myriad of other possessions …. collecting dust on the dresser. 

I can only step inside but not walk around. Everywhere I look his childhood looks back: A wall of Nerf, shelves of Lego; drawers stuffed to overflowing with clothes that he has long outgrown. He lives out of laundry baskets.

One of these days, (I tell myself daily), I will get in there and take control of the clutter.

The clock is ticking. 

The warm air is pungent with spent socks and the remnants of midnight snacks, but I can also make out the smells of various tinctures and tonics he uses to make his shaves more smooth and his hair more rugged.

I try to be careful. Speak softly, try not to startle him. The moods of teenagers are appropriately fickle whether we parents approve or not. But still … I am his second wake-up call if you count the sunrise clock that makes no sound.

It can be a delicate job that his father often drill-sergeants through to his own detriment. I endeavor to handle him with kid gloves.

Not that we don’t get the same response - I’m awake! - it’s just that he sounds much less annoyed as he relays his assurances that he will be ready to leave on time.

I find trusting his word builds equity. He knows I’ll be the one owing late fees as I wait for a second cup of coffee to brew as he’s warming the car. He doesn’t beep the horn, instead, he pings my phone with a string of “MOM”s in rapid fire. 

We are not going to be late. But time is dwindling. Soon enough - if he follows his sister’s lead - we will be packing a car with all his dorm room essentials. 

Recently, he attended his third college tour. The first that was meant solely for him. As a younger brother, he had trailed along silently but with his eyes fully focused on the work at hand. I could tell he was looking forward to taking his turn one day even if he wasn’t ready to map it all out by himself.

So I made an appointment and sent him off with his father to explore his first choice. A university with two campuses to choose from just outside of his ability to commute. 

“He really opened up,” his father told me on one of many calls to keep me apprised. The boy had navigated maps, asked questions, and chatted with other prospective students with an air of confidence that my husband admitted had come as a surprise.

“He really seems like he’s coming out of his shell.”

Funny how we still see our children as we get closer to ushering them into adulthood.

Ma bell

Her face comes up on the screen and everything around me stops. My breath catches and the room goes silent if only in my consciousness, which has muted what had previously been an entertaining noise.

A cold sweat comes over me; not unlike the sudden panic of a doorbell; perhaps welcome sounds back in the olden days of neighborly caretaking. Perhaps not.

Even back then, the doorbell would send me into a panic. Stranger danger isn’t a new development; mothers everywhere warned their children away from answering doors when they were home alone, or at least from telling the door ringer, or even the phone caller that we were, in fact, home alone. 

But when the house was full, we would trip over ourselves to get to a rigging phone. I’d stretched out the coiled cords, worrying them through closet doors, to get some privacy,  

I can’t say as I miss the days when we used to wall ourselves off in our rooms, listening to music and engaging in marathon-length phone conversations where nothing truly memorable was ever discussed despite how important it all seemed. 

My mother would rattle the door an hour before she needed me to hang up, and again, more fervently at the half-hour mark, so she could place her nightly welfare checks on the elderly aunties before they retired to sleep. 

Things haven’t changed as much as we think. Since we all have our own separate phones, I am at liberty to call (or text) the elderly aunties whenever I like, though still trying for reasonable hours. But I rattle to door to my son’s room every so often just to see his face.

This is what I tell my daughter when I look at the phone tracking app to locate her from afar. I’m not so much checking up as checking in, though I can’t pretend either definition isn’t a first cousin of stalking. 

Unlike her friends’ parents, who track down their kids and quiz them as to why they may be in a sketchy neighborhood after dark, or in a questionable establishment geared toward debauchery, inebriation, and the potential for sophomoric pranks, when I see her icon photo somewhere other than her dorm room, I sigh in gratitude that she’s not just holed up in her cubicle being all alone in her aloneness. 

I walk a fine line, I know. It’s easily crossed. So easy that I don't tell what I know from checking the maps. I don’t let on that I know she was at an arena, or in the shopping district, or at a frat house. What she does is her business. 

I don't expect the good news to travel as fast as the bad. 

Which is why every nerve in my body stands at attention when the phone rings with her face looking to spend time with mine. I do everything in my power not to answer the phone the way my mom used to answer: What do you want … or what’s wrong? 

Often I fail.

“Why can’t your daughter just call you to say hi?”

“Oh, she most certainly can! How’s everything going?”

“Well, everything was going fine but Trader Joe's just stopped stocking cornichons… how am I supposed to live without my gherkins?”

Out of pocket

I thought about the bills I had tucked in my pocket. It was money I had considered saving ... or spending on pizza. I hadn't yet decided. 

I knew I should have taken the time to slide the notes into the wallet. But I didn't want to find my purse. I could be careful I told myself as I walked the dog. They would stay put in my jacket with my phone, a car key, and my hand ... keeping everything sufficiently warm.

It was predictable. I had shuffled all these things several times during the stroll: taking care of Fido's business; pulling out my phone to take a picture of the sun setting; lathering, rinsing repeating. Eventually, I remembered the cash and decided to check. The smaller denomination was clinging to my phone but the larger bill was gone.

It wasn’t a lot but decided to trace our steps backward to see if it had somehow stayed on the road and not taken a ride on the wind.

I didn't find it. Not along the way or at any of the places we stopped. 

I think it is a premonition of hardship to come. I’d rather not say my mind works that way because I know it’s the way I unravel. 

The fear of knowing some loss more than money is always lying in wait.

I tamp down the feelings with something, anything, positive. 

“At least lost money would benefit a finder,” I think.

Which was not the comfort I took from the disappearance of a pocket knife my father had given me as a college graduation present. The one I wanted when I was seven, but he didn’t think I was mature enough to own as a second grader. 

Somehow, I lost it to the ocean the first summer holiday I’d taken as a newly minted adult. I comforted myself then that at least I’d always know about where it was if not exactly. 

Over the years I lost so many things I adored: 

Books I had lent, jewelry that had slipped off fingers, even a beaded cuff my daughter had just given were there and then gone, Like an “Irish Goodbye.”

I wish I could be anywhere else than on a gurney waiting for a needle to take its core samples. Squeezing my eyes shut hoping life after this is more about the finding than the losing. 

Still, I do what I always do. Which is letting my repetitive thoughts bargain with superstition. I will count the steps in each flight of stairs; each second between songs. I will play games of solitaire until my cards align.

I add a year to my age on purpose, wishing I’d never shredded the ARRP welcome letter (with its fantabulous offer of automobile trunk organizers) just for reaching the crest of old age.

Eventually, I know time and inevitability will tarnish its protective effects, which, I can be honest, had never ever been protective. Youth weights probabilities differently. 

But not now. I am not ready to put my affairs in order. But perhaps I am ready to sort through the junk in my trunk. Maybe I’ll find some of the treasures I’ve lost. 

Comfort me, Elmo

When Sesame Street’s Elmo took to social media last week to touch base with followers in his trademark third-person style – “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” – the response, an outpouring of angst and unhappiness, was immediate and at times intense.

People told him of their struggles with loss; their marriages, loved ones, pets, jobs, possessions.

They told him of their anguish over the state of the world and their inability to change its seeming trajectory into war and destruction.

And they told him of their general malaise: “Elmo, I’m feeling pretty sad right now. I think I need a hug."

Even celebrities and political figures added to the conversation, including President Biden:

“I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.

Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it.

Even though it's hard, you're never alone.”

And while it may seem silly – a moment of cathartic exchange set off by a fuzzy member of the Children’s Television Workshop – it is certainly a testament to the lasting impact children's programming has had on our lives.

It's understood from studies dating back to the 1970s, when Sesame Street was still in its toddler years, that children's educational television has had a significant impact on our kids’ school readiness. We all practiced our colors, letters, and shapes from comforting monsters, some of whom lived in trash cans and were benignly grumpy. It made our parents happy.

These colorful, matted muppets perfectly demonstrated the wondrous nature children embody. They may have seemed like children, adults, or imaginary creatures, but these puppets were always safe and accessible.

Elmo was my daughter’s favorite. And for a good long while during her pre-verbal days, I wished he wasn’t.

I didn’t grow up with him. He didn't make me comfortable. At all. I didn’t like the high-pitched voice that confused tenses and referred to himself by name alone. I thought he was whiny. I scoffed at the idea that he was getting grammar wrong on purpose. “He’s using fishes as a noun! How can that be ok?”

But I had grown up. I had lost some of that wonder of childhood.

Elmo didn't speak my language. But he did speak my daughter's -- literally – he spoke the onset of speech for a person new to its practice. He forgot articles and repeated words, but he laughed a laugh of sheer joy that told my daughter getting it wrong isn't scary. He was gentle and sweet and he was learning just like his biggest fans.

It was during a week-long hospital stay when my daughter was 18 months old that I learned to love the sound of his voice as he kept my daughter not only calm but in good spirits.

That experience stayed with me as an adult in much the same way a fondness for wooly mastodons that seem a little sad, and vampires who love counting, had imprinted on my experiences of childhood.

I never said another unkind word about that marvelous monster again.

It's reassuring to know that he's still a creature in whom we can all take just a little bit of comfort.