Chocolate Abuelita and Stale Churros (with a side of grief)

I read somewhere, or someone told me, that parents go through a grieving process when their kids grow up. Specifically the teen years. And I thought, nope. Not me. First of all, A and I are so close, that we'll just get closer - or at least, I thought, that his teenage years would not look like the stereotypical boys'. Plus, I will be too proud of his stepping out in the world to grieve. I am above all this pyscho-babble. Right?

Wrong.

It is unbearably painful to watch A grow. Not bad pain, necessarilly. Not always, anyway. Sometimes I am in honest-to-god fear that I will explode as I swell with pride at my fine young man. (Fine against all odds, really, given where this child comes from.) Joy can hurt. Pride and love and empathy can hurt. A sweet, lovely hurt, but a deep hurt, nonetheless.

I am proud that he doesn't need me like he used to. It's what I have always wanted for him. But it hurts. His growing independence has left a huge unfillable gap in my entire identity. I'm still figuring out who I am when I'm not actively being his mom.

Probably for the best then that he's gone to live with his father for a while. Time to cut the proverbial apron strings... Ug. Why? Why does one have to cut the strings???

I was looking forward tonight to having A home and making him some hot chocolate the way I used to make it for my sisters. And I found churros at the store and eventhough the last thing that child needs is sugar, I was looking forward to the treat.

"Uh... do I have to come?" Squeek - I can't talk or breathe... I feel like I haven't seen him in months. No, of course you don't have to come. (I will NOT be that mom.) "Ok. Thanks. Love you mom." And I'm so devastated I can't say I love you back. I send him a text message... "Hung up before I could say I love you back!"

My over-the-top reaction and the immediate I-need-to-fix-it text message are an in-your-face clue that there is entirely too much hinging on this relationship... and maybe, just maybe, it's time to start the letting go phase of this stupid grieving process.

I make hot chocolate anyway. And I bite into the churros... which turn out to be stale. And I cry.

Just as I start to fall further and further into my grief sprial, my phone beeps. Text message from A: "Love u."

Whiplash. Again.

No matter how many times I tell myself that I'm not going to fall for it, that I'm not going to engage, inevitably I do. I get my heart broken and my stomach punched and my throat constricted and my hopes let down. Way down.

This is time number who-knows-what that the father of my child says something is going to happen a certain way and then changes his mind at the last effing minute. The past several times have had to do with whether or not A is finally going to move back home. He is. He's not. He is. He's not.

There are many days when I hit complete okayness with him not being home. I don't WANT him here, I think. Finally, some time to myself, I think. It's so much more serene without that boy here, I think. But THEN - the idea that he might move home creeps in and I soften and I can't wait, and I fool myself into thinking that by not physically preparing for him to be home I am also not emotionally preparing for him to come home. But I'm wrong. I am always preparing to have him come home. It's where he belongs. (Even though I know that I don't get to decide that. That, in fact, mother does not always know best)

I miss him. He is an extension of my being and I want him home. I want him to want to be home.

And I abhor R for bing so flighty and self-centered and self-serving. And completely oblivious.

The Nodule is Nothing

That's good, right? And somehow I feel incredibly let down. This whole journey started when I went to a new OB-GYN to make sure all my baby-making parts were in good working order. But then - gasp - there's blood in my urine (for months I keep saying there's urine in my blood, which is gross). Not once, but twice. So off to the urologist (pee doctor) I go. And after a CT scan to check for the big C word (during which I FAINT! Yes, faint - alone in the hallway while sitting in a wheelchair), I am told that my bladder is beautiful and there's just no telling why I have bloody pee. Great. THEN, I get a call that there is a nodule in my lung, prompting me to do that most insane thing you can do when given this kind of information: I spend hours googling nodule and am sure that I will die of lung cancer in 6 months. Go to the pulmonologist, who schedules yet another scan for 6 months down the road. Great, 6 months to obssess. What if I'm dead by then??? Appointment was today. Nodule hasn't changed as far as he can tell... This is great news. It is, really. But 2 grand and a whole bunch of specialist appointments later, I think I was kind of wishing something would be wrong. Not anything deadly, mind you, just something to make all this shit worth the time and energy spent.

Maybe it's just my addiction to drama and attention. Hmmm.

Entre Santos Perros Gringos

This time of year makes everyone reminiscent, I know, but the after-christmas let down makes me miss Mexico and my sisters more than usual (and that is saying a lot). Forever christmas meant singing goofy Mexican posada songs (la pinata tiene cola, tiene cola, tiene cola colacion...); B, M and I piling into the same bed with dogs shaking in their skin in fear of those big bad christmas eve fireworks; hunting down the stockings that we couldn't hang by the chimney with care (what with the dogs and all) at three in the morning, and waking up christmas morning (if we slept at all) to what I now understand was a ridiculously enormous and overdone and more-than-we-can-afford pile of presents under the tree. I still try to live up - my sister's probably do too - to the christmas' my mother staged, but it's never the same. I could never pull a repeat with A when he was little, no matter how hard I tried... so I think that it is the combination of Mexico and my relationship with my sister's that made christmas what it was. Man, I miss it.