Raising A Boy

I always knew he was a boy, from the heaviness of his sleep when I carried him, which used to drive me to tears, and his father, my husband, soon to be ex-husband, or maybe not, used to say: ‘He’s just sleeping.’ When he finally woke up and kicked me , I wouldn’t have minded if he broke my rib.

So began our dance of me worrying about him and he kicking me back, to give him some space. I forced myself to let him be a boy. A real boy. From the first time he got on a bike and just peddled away to the time he drove a car by himself at age 13 on an LA Boulevard with my sly Tennessee friend Mary-Ellen next to him. No grotesque amusement park ride ever too scary, no wave ever too daunting, always purple-lipped and shivering by the time he would be pulled from a frigid pool, swearing he’s not cold, not hungry, just having a blast and seeing no reason for the fun to stop. There were broken bones, ER visits, the usual stuff–and at each step I resisted my urge to place him inside a plastic bubble controlled by a hand held radio-steering device that never left my hand.

All through the 90s, the Upper West Side mothers had one battle cry that I always cringed at:

Sitting not on the edge of the sandbox but often inside it, negotiating every shovel and pail dispute, they would coo:

“Use your words, Dylan, use your words.”

Boys were absolutely not supposed to exhibit aggression. I found it perverse. I knew enough to know I had to let him go, and let him find the line between boldness and self protection, if he was to break free of me, which of course I would have preferred he didn’t, but I curtailed that beastly urge. I reminded myself that he is not a parcel, not “mine.”

He wanted life with all it had to offer, since he could talk. The only thing that scared him was spiders, and what he called ‘the funny feeling,’ he got when he thought about time having no end, and the choice between being “deleted” or existing forever, neither of which appealed.

Jesus.

“Mom,” he said, at age 4, out of the blue, when we were taking a walk, “I need to get some friends who know what they’re doing.” I laughed for an hour. All his life, he’s seen me get felled, my feet tangled, mud sprayed, opportunities dashed, humiliations delivered, and an over-arching sense of never having or keeping the football, like Charlie Brown. He, on the other hand, would not, by mutual agreement, identify with it. He was a born leader, impossibly popular, yet gentle and compassionate, aware that I had cursed him with a keen sense of pathos–the two of us suddenly weeping over a turkey in the oven and imagining its mother, or he making me dig in the sawdust at the end of hamster Dusty’s life to see if she was still alive. Every half hour.

When he and his friend Alexander were about 8, we were at a lake in northern Connecticut, and they wanted to jump off a water tower into the lake. Alexander’s mother, Gully, said no way, it’s too dangerous. They stood scowling, and soon a little stocky girl in a bathing suit came over, blithely climbed the tower, and dove into the lake. I turned to Gully: ‘Now we have no choice. A girl did it. We have to let them.”

So we did. And off they jumped, about 200 times over the next few days.

He is now 14. He is my sole reason for waking up each day and continuing to try to turn the grounded vessel of my life around, to continue to believe in vanishing notions of getting life right, carrying on, starting over. There are few mistakes I haven’t made, few moments I can recall where I am able to approve of or even understand what I did.

Except for him.

Last week, two mornings in a row, he was unusually silent in the morning. He showers for half an hour, earning him his Native American name, Longshower, and he didn’t reply to my shouts through the door telling him what time it was.

On Friday he slept over at his friend Jake’s house, like he usually does. When he came home on Saturday, we were scheduled to take a bus upstate to see my sister. He walked in with a black eye, a fat lip, and a swollen hand.

“I was in a fight,” he said. I looked him over. “I think that might be broken,” I said, examining his hand.

I sat him down and he told me the story: A bully had been harassing him and his friends near their old school yard where they still hang out, for weeks. He challenged the bully to hit him, finally, and when he did not, he whispered an epithet that means coward, and walked away. The bully sucker-punched him in the jaw, from the side, and he saw stars. He stewed for a day, then sent word out that the bully should meet him in the yard on Friday after school. All very West Side Story: My son’s gang accompanied him, instructed not to intervene, and eventually the kid showed up, with his crew. My son had inquired in advance whether the bully might have a knife or a gun and was told he did not. My head spun, hearing of all this going on totally unbeknownst to me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I howled.

“Because you would have told me not to fight him,” he said matter of factly.

They pummeled each other for what he thought was about three minutes, until somebody called the cops, and the sound of the sirens caused them all to scatter.

“Anyway, I feel better,” he said. “I was so angry, and now I’m not.”

We missed our bus. I started crying. Somehow all the pent up tension of 15 years of living with this heavy love, this helplessness, lack of control, spider-web faith that he would be protected and make sound choices out there, caught up with me.

We arrived upstate and my sister Bibi drove us to the nearest ER, where they told us he had two broken bones in his hand, and bandaged him up. As he lay there on the gurney, so skinny, with his big feet and his AC/DC T shirt, I remembered the very first time he stopped my heart. I was four months pregnant and was being attended to by an elderly MD who told me: “You are a healthy 27 year old pregnant woman, nothing is wrong with you,” as if addressing the ever increasing neurosis in our culture that pregnancy is an emergency.

“I know,” I said.

But on that second visit, the elderly doctor held a stethoscope to my stomach and went stiff.

Nurses were called in–they couldn’t find his heartbeat. I lay there praying, and tears trickled into my ears and time and space dissolved, until finally somebody shouted that they had found it again. I didn’t even know how much I wanted him–I had been somewhat angered to find myself pregnant, never thinking I was female, quite, escaping this condition by way of becoming a traveling journalist on the hunt, unencumbered, crossing Africa, covering world events, propelling myself with ideas and ideals I thought were incredibly important.

Where did the past 15 years go?

He shifted in the gurney and we talked about the new Kanye West record, and his hopes for it.

The doctor came in and gave my son a speech, about the importance of using language to de-escalate conflicts, not violence.

“I think he’s right, ” I said, when he left.

My son reminded me that years ago, I had told him that if you “have to punch a bully in the nose” if you want the problem dealt with. I did remember saying this–clearly an acting out of my own thwarted bully dreams, all the times I never got to hit back. “Since when do you listen to me?” I said.

How do you thank God enough, when you are able to walk out of a hospital with your son in bandages, and suddenly you are connected to all the mothers through all the ages who weren’t so fortunate? How do you take that gratitude, and promise God anything he wants so long as your one important prayer is always answered?

I know: It was just a fight in the school yard. But what if he wanted to go join the army and go fight a war? This to me, is the mystery, how the mothers survive the nights of war, not knowing. After all they have done to protect him and keep him safe. But part of the job is making him a “man” and instilling the notion of values, sacrifice, courage and valor, which all become a hopeless blur anywhere except in the movies.

I know there is some ancient Greek playwright who addressed all this.

The security guard said: “That guy is gonna come back. Did you mess him up? He’s gonna come back. You got to watch your back.”

I started reeling off prohibitions about where he could traverse between now and next Easter.

“I didn’t mess him up,” said my son. He said that for my sake. And it brought up an image of the other kid, in a bathroom, his own mother fumbling for bandages and peroxide.

My father had a good line, when I told him what happened. He drew a deep breath.

“Tell Jeremy we’re proud of him. But enough already.”