Pedro's father was working twelve hour shifts at the hospital the week my son came back home. Instead of staying with his dad the house, Pedro decided to stay with me while I was working from home. I was grateful. I thought it was better that Pedro have someone to talk to when he woke up instead of being left alone in an empty house until dinnertime. And to be honest, I was grateful for the company. I just started a new job a few months earlier and I was lonely working at home during the pandemic. There were weeks where I only had one or two meetings. I didn't spend much time interacting with other people. At times, I felt like I was in solitary confinement. My quarantine prison cell had a nice view of the water, but the same could be said of Alcatraz.
For two months, Pedro lived with me. I felt like the time was an aberration--when you send your kids out in the world, they aren't supposed to come back as children. Two years ago, I had grieved his departure, and now he was home again. This felt like when the inner planets Mercury and Venus are in retrograde. There is an optical illusion when the planets appear to be moving backwards in their orbit around the sun. In fact, their orbits haven't changed at all. My son was home was a brief stop on his way out again.
I had been a busy mom for so many years, driving kids to soccer practices, going to band concerts, watching cross-country meets. Unexpectedly, I became an empty-nester two years earlier than expected, grieving that loss of time. Pedro's oldest sister had left for college the year before Pedro was sent away. I had been looking forward to the time Pedro had his chance to be an only child, to get his parents' full and undivided attention. I was looking forward to not having to manage two kids at the same time. I was looking forward to slowing down, and just having one kid to focus on. That was all lost. Now, he was back, just for a short bit, before he leaves for college.
While Pedro was moving from a group living situation, I had a roommate for the first time in a few years. At a basic level, I enjoyed it: I had someone to talk to over breakfast, someone to decide what do with for lunch. He was much more amenable to taking direction and taking care of himself. Sometimes he would forget to eat, but a gentle nudge from me telling him to get a bowl of cereal was not met with hostility. He would make jokes. Sometimes he would make me breakfast. I had to learn to be patient when he didn't do things as fast as I would have liked. It took him longer to get a job than I would have liked, but in the end he got a job walking distance from my apartment, which locked in where he was going to live for the summer.
The funny thing about life is that when it is easy, peaceful and serene, sometimes it isn't all that memorable. The blow-ups were few and infrequent. I often had to remind myself that my son was eighteen, not exactly the easiest age for young men.
There was one instance about three weeks in. After I had finished work, Pedro and I drove forty-five minutes away to a local river to fly fish. On the dark trail back to the car with my headlamp lighting the way, Pedro started busting my chops about how I wasn't a good enough fly fisherman, how I wasn't taking those dream vacations I had on my bucket list, and on and on for an hour. I didn't tell him to stop or set a boundary or ask him to be kinder and gentler to his dear old mother. When I got home, I freaked out for letting him rag on me. Here it was, I was the one relapsing first, not Pedro. I was the one falling into old patterns.
I was terrified. What I couldn't do this? What if I couldn't effectively be a mom? What would happen to my son?
The next morning, a friend called and asked if I wanted to get out of town for the weekend. I said yes. I packed my bag and texted Pedro and his father that I taking off for a few days. I needed them to watch the dog.
"Are you okay?" Jack asked. He called when he saw my text. Instead of being angry or annoyed that I was leaving town and leaving him with the kid, Jack seemed worried about me.
"I need a break," I said. "I am falling back into my old ways." The old me would have asked Jack for permission, checking that his schedule was clear before I made any plans. Fuck it, I thought. If I don't get a break, I will completely lose my mind and that won't serve anyone.
On the ride out of town, I called one of the other mom's at Pedro's boarding school. I was worried that Pedro would feel abandoned, that he would be mad at me forever. She cheered me on.
"Go have a great time," Diana said. "You will be a better mom for this in the end." I needed the support from someone whose son also returned home this summer. She knew as close as anyone else could what I was going through.
On the trip, I went fly fishing with a guide along the Kootenai. I improved my cast and learned how to mend my line. I learned how to hook a fish once it bit the fly, and how to pull it in. I learned how to spay cast. And I caught five fish, including a beautiful fifteen inch rainbow trout.
When I got home, I talked about my fishing trip and how I took my paddleboard out on a lake. I was relaxed and happy. Pedro was actually happy for me.
Pedro had his relapse, too. One day at work, he was feeling overwhelmed and he came home in the middle of the day. This was a test for both of us: Would Pedro be able to bounce back from his set-back, and would I not freak out about it? Would I catastrophize and imagine my son never going to work again? Would he get fired? Would he decide it wasn't worth it to participate in the work force and give up? Would he become a sponge and never get a job and just fly fish for the rest of his life? I was an expert at mentally spinning out on the smallest gravel patch.
After all of the books and therapy sessions, the biggest beacon for me was Simone Biles and the twisties. What if I were her parents? Would I have been supportive of her not competing, or would I have told her suck it up, buttercup and get her butt on the beam? I was horrified that I might have been that nutjob parent.
Internally, I was freaking out. Externally, I was calm. I asked Pedro what I could to support him. If he needed space, that was fine. I'd see him after I got back from paddle-boarding and we'd have dinner. The dog had surgery the day before. Before I left for the lake, I put the dog on Pedro's bed and asked him to take care of Fox. As I was leaving, the dog snuggled up next to Pedro. I saw Pedro's posture soften as he held the dog.
When I came back a few hours later, Pedro was restored. I don't know what did the trick: the dog, calling his girlfriend in Montana, or me giving my son space to sort through all of his mixed up and confused feelings. Maybe given the space, my son was able to tap into all of the emotional tools he had learned over the past two years, and work it out himself. Maybe it was all of those.
Maybe part of it was just me and my view and reaction to my son's challenges. How often before would I try to swoop in and save him from unpleasant feelings, to fix his emotional bumps and bruises instead of letting him sit with his own feelings and figure it out? How hard was it for me to do something different, and not fall back into my rutted behavior? My re-entry to motherhood required me to use emotional muscles that I had never used before. I was a little sore--just like I was after learning to paddleboard--but I was in a much better place.
Just like Mercury's perceived backwards loop in his orbit, my loop back into parenthood came to an end as Pedro left for college last week. Now I get to re-enter another world: life without kids.
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