When a kid is just a kid

It hasn’t been a very long time at all since I started relenting on my PG-rated only movies rule. My son complains bitterly that his friends get to watch movies like Saw V and why won’t I even let him watch The Dark Knight? I had been so careful for so long in screening films before I would let him see them, making my judgments based upon what I felt was at least an “acceptable loss.” My rigid stance on this issue had become so ingrained in him that he even called me on the weekends that he was at my ex’s to ask whether he could watch a certain movie or not. When our neighbors downstairs put on Fast and the Furious for their 5-year-old, my son trudged up the stairs and asked if I would come read the back of the DVD case so he could watch it, too.

It was about that time that I realized how humiliating this might be to him. While I am absolutely not ready to allow him to watch the Saw series, I do think that, at 9, he can probably handle some of the PG-13 films if they aren’t too violent and don’t reek of sex. I gave in to The Dark Knight and we both got hooked on Hellboy and its sequel. So far so good. Until tonight.

Tonight was our movie night. We have On Demand, so I was perusing the offerings on HBO and came across Will Smith’s I am Legend. Mind you, I have seen this movie before. Hey, it’s Will Smith, right? A guy, his dog, a bunch of human eating zomboids…how bad was it, anyway? Oh, right…pretty bad. We started out okay and then I realized that my big boy was becoming a smaller and smaller ball in the corner of the sofa as time went on. Pretty soon he had a pillow over his eyes and was begging me to fast forward through the CGI flesh-eating bits. Then we came to the part about the (spoiler alert!!!) dog and well, that was it. I stopped the movie and we switched over to an episode of Man vs. Food. The one from Boise, Idaho where he eats a habanero pizza and 6 lbs. of hamburger, pastrami, and chili cheese fries. I actually thought that was far more frightening.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

“Yes, honey.”

I took him in and we went through our nightly ritual of turning on his Christmas CD (yes, he listens to the same CD at bedtime 365 days a year), performing Little Bunny Foo Foo (he tries so hard to keep me from tickling him until he is ready to puke from laughter), and taking turns naming 10 good things about the day. I started to leave when he asked me to leave the light on. Oh, and maybe that other one, too. Um…and mom? Can I have that other stuffed dog on the floor? Okay, maybe the one from my room, too. And where’s the one I gave you for Valentine’s Day last year? I pulled it out from behind the overstuffed armchair in the corner. Are you okay now? He nodded. I kissed him on the forehead and went off to get some more work done.

I went to bed around 10, planning to read a bit. I’m well into Frank McCourt’s ‘Tis, and I try to fit in at least a few chapters every night. I walked right into the stuffed animal scene from E.T., The Extraterrestrial. My sleeping boy’s face was just visible through a slew of stuffed creatures, including Sock Monkey, which I know was in his room when I left earlier. I smiled and lay down. He stirred as I climbed onto the bed and as I looked at him, he slowly opened his eyes. He focused on me eventually, his lips turned up in a small half-smile, and his eyelids dropped heavily back down.

So much for my big, brave boy. I imagine that our next movie night will be more Doogal than Doomsday.

We ARE the Wild Things

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to see me through my son’s eyes. The reflection mirrored there is ugly indeed. I can see myself rolling my terrible eyes and gnashing my terrible teeth and yet, I am unable to stop. I would like to be one of those mothers that thrives on being a mom…one that doesn’t, in the heat of the moment, feel as though she’ s made a horrible mistake in choosing to have a child. How can anyone admit to that? I love my son. But we don’t get along.

Today I took him to see Where the Wild Things Are. This was pretty much like seeing my favorite childhood book on crack. Seriously. This is no fuzzy Disney film. It’s dark and scary and sad and lonely and I cried because I thought my son was just like Max and his mom was just like me and it made me feel sick that we come to that end of so much passion and feeling that we physically hurt each other in trying to make ourselves heard by each other.

I brought my kid into a world that I had hoped to populate with a brother or a sister. I brought my son into a world where he had two parents (however dysfunctional we were, both separately and together). I brought my son into a world that I thought would be a much different place than it is now when I struggle with keeping my apartment and worrying about my next job and I am lonely and sad that the man I love left me and left yet another hole in the already torn fabric of our life together.

My kid turned 9 recently. He’s a bona fide boy. Prepubescent, hormonal, smelly, fresh. He had a party for his birthday and I heard one of his friends drop the “F” bomb. Casually. I was thrown into that age again. The age when you start to think you know everything and your parents know nothing and you are invincible. And then, at night when the lights go out you still want to know where your mommy is so you aren’t afraid to fall asleep. Max was like that. He went away. He escaped the clutches of his evil mother with her evil date and her evil frozen corn (because we single mothers have a hard time mustering up the energy to really do much more than fish sticks and tater tots these days). He thought he was invincible and when he found out his new friends were monsters he wished he had his mommy so he wouldn’t be afraid to go to sleep at night.

At one point during the movie, I reached over and held my son’s hand. He looked at me, confused. I just held it tight and watched the movie. I held it with all of the love I had in my heart. I held it with the silent knowledge that even though I am mean and horrible and scary and sometimes I hurt him without meaning to…I’m really just as scared and alone and injured as he is.

After the movie he asked if we could look at the book again when we got home. I said yes. He seemed happy to have spent the afternoon together. We turned the corner of the long hallway that brought us into the lobby and through the floor-to-ceiling glass we saw huge fat flakes of snow pouring out of the gray, gray skies. We looked up in wonder and laughed and as we walked to the car we tried to catch them on our tongues but they stuck in our hair and on our clothes and eyelashes. A moment of magic. A single moment of magic.

Would that we could string them together into many, many moments of magic and our whole lives would be beautiful…like a boat sailing home on still, calm waters.

The Dance of Anger

I stand on the porch smoking a cigarette. Huddled next to the wall, thinly veiled shelter from the cold drizzle of an early June rain. It’s 8:30 p.m. and I haven’t eaten dinner. I miss a lot of meals these days. Eat when I absolutely have to. I try to touch base with my stomach, gaging my hunger level. Nada. I’m tired. Worn down. Worn out.

We’re on our own again. My son and I. For two and a half years we were part of a family again. The man he calls “dad” started moving his things out of our home and into his own place yesterday. In the  meantime my kid plays me like a delicate keyboard. He knows exactly which buttons to push. I envision a long summer stretched out before us. Me: trying to keep my head in my work. Him: calling me constantly from across the apartment. “Mommy!” “Mommy!” I trudge back and forth from my desk to his room to repeatedly ask him to come to me if he needs something. Trivial nothings that require no more attention than…my attention.

He’s been sick. Two nights ago I rode with him in the back of an ambulance. He: glazed over, delirious with fever, excessively dehydrated from a day of vomiting and the inability to keep anything down. I sit anxiously with him as he bravely waits out the insertion of an IV. Lie down next to him in the cold, dark of the emergency room. Constantly texting my ex, his “mama” and my ex(?) his “dad.” Calling my parents with status reports. At 1:00 we take a long cab ride home. Two, three towns away. He sleeps most of the next day away as his temperature rises and falls with the tide of Motrin and Tylenol.

Today. No fever. I am vastly relieved. My relief turns to frustration as he becomes needy for a playmate. I have to make money. I have to work. My work has suffered badly in the last few weeks. I was told by my only client that this was the result of “working during an emotional crisis.” Now I have to rework the entire job. My time. My dime. Fix it, make it better, renew their faith in my abilities. My abilities, my job, it’s all we have to keep us going. I refuse to land in that hard, empty place of relying on others to lift me out of my troubles. Financial. Emotional. Mental. I made the decision to stand on my own two feet and keep it together.

I blow out a long puff of smoke, only to have it blow back in my face with a gust of wind. My eyes squint shut. I tap the ashes over the railing and let the cat out with the knowledge that he’ll probably find a dry basement somewhere to spend the night. I can’t blame him. I can’t blame my ex(?) either. It’s hard to live with an energetic 8-year-old who wants constant attention and a mother who can’t always keep her temper in check during the haranguing for a game, a movie together, an hour or so of legos. It seems such a simple request, but I’m tired. Really tired.

I had banished him to his room after he kept badgering me to change the channel on the TV. I wanted to watch House. He wanted anything but. He has his own television, I reminded him. After a few minutes I call into the next room to remind him to brush his teeth before bed and get no answer. My voice gets louder, more insistent. I get nothing back. I give up. Eventually I go to his room to cajole him into his nightly ablutions. He is fast asleep. I turn out the light and grab my cigarettes. Find myself on the porch. Huddled next to the wall, thinly veiled shelter from the cold drizzle of an early June rain.

I stub out the embers in a tiny pool of water that has beaded on the railing. Drop my butt into a bucket filled with sand and glass from the broken front door. My steps are heavy as I make my way back up to our apartment. I quietly close and lock the door. Glance into his room. He is still asleep. His temp was back up a little. Not much. Hopefully, he’ll be back at school tomorrow while I make amends and promises I hope I can keep. I have to work. I have to make this work. I have no other choices.

I search for balance between all that I have on my plate and all that my son needs from me emotionally. I am drained and ready for bed. I hope that the new day brings renewed energy and a release from my frustration as a single mother, trying to cope, alone, again.