Two weeks ago I went to Old Navy on my day off. I searched through boy's jeans for a good hour, digging for his size, making sure the wash on each pair was different. I remember in third grade, my mom bought me 4 pairs of the same jeans. Same color, same pockets, same everything. Within a few days kids started teasing me in a mean spirited way, about wearing the same jeans every day. My mom sewed cute patches on the back pockets so they all looked different, alas, her effort came too late. The teasing never stopped all year long. I try to spare my kid the indignities I suffered as a child. I buy him the REAL Nike's, not the knock offs with the upside down swoosh that my mom bought me. He wears Wal-Mart shirts, or thrift store shirts most of the time, and never complains about them. That day at Old Navy, I spent over a hundred bucks on jeans and a couple of long sleeved shirts. I left there feeling like I was winning at the Mom Game. For the last couple of weeks when I pick him up at school or watch him getting out of the car in the mornings, I think about how grown up and cool he looks in his new duds. He's one of the best dressed kids at his school, if I do say so myself.
In his room, he has an XBox One that he got for Christmas two years ago. Last year he got a compound bow and a boatload of video games. The XBox takes up most of his free time lately, although I try my best to put limits on the time he spends with it. He enjoys it mostly because his friends get on and they can all play together. Over the last six months I have bought 4 new sets of headphones for that thing. Last time I bought one, I told him I was not buying another, so he better take good care of it. Often I say to him that we are fortunate people because we have everything we need and a lot of the things we want. I say this to him because I want to instill a spirit of gratitude in him.
Turns out, I'm not winning at this Mom Game.
At the Waffle House, tears sprung to my eyes so fast I couldn't hold them back. The waitress put my scrambled eggs and hashbrowns down in front of me and suddenly I felt too sick to eat, so instead, I watched him devour the chocolate chip waffle and his own hashbrowns.
His words stung my heart worse than that wasp sting I got on my thumb a few years ago when I moved an old grill out from under the deck and discovered a nest of angry bees. My mind flashed back to another moment, maybe ten years ago with Sylia. We were walking into Wal-Mart together. I don't remember why we were shopping, but I remember the words I heard her say as we walked past the greeter and into the front section of the store where large TVs were displayed along the side. "Everything we have is crap anyway," she said, and I felt that same sting. It said to me that nothing I could give my children would ever be good enough. Nothing I worked so hard to attain, the material things, the thought I put into everything I did for them, the sacrifices I made so I could give them more than I was given as a child--it was all just crap, it would always be just crap.
Lately I think a lot about my financial situation. I consider going back to full time work and look all the time for jobs that will pay a salary higher than what I average now between disability and my part-time job. I contacted a mortgage broker a while back, ran my credit report and asked for his help so I can buy a home for us again--get us out of this tiny house and into a place where we can enjoy the company of a dog again. Turns out my credit wasn't as bad as I thought, but it isn't good either. I never heard back from that broker, which tells me that my prospects for buying a home must be grim. Already discouraged, my child's words plunged me beneath a deep wave of defeat from which I fear I may never rise above again.
After a few minutes of watching him eat his waffle as though he were raised by cavemen, I said, "I give up." I got my phone out and read my emails, trying to distract myself so I could stop crying.
"I'm trying to be grateful for what I have." He said to me, looking at me as though I had offended him with my tears.
"Trying?"
"Yes, I'm trying!" He said. "You're saying I'm wrong for trying to be grateful!"
Even this exchange digs at a familiar wound, healed over or so I believe, with thick emotional scars. I feel the pangs of it though, the argument turned around and upside down so I'm left believing myself the offender, owing an apology. Only now, I see this for what it is and I know better than to respond.
"Are you done?" I asked him.
"Yeah." He took one last sip of his coke as I grabbed the yellow ticket and headed for the register to pay.
In the car I thought of things I wanted to say to him, but I said nothing. Everything I could think of would come across as guilt tripping or self pity, or both. We rode in silence as I drove him to his sister's house and dropped him off.
"I love you." He said, as he got out of the car.
"Love you too." I sad back.
I drove myself to the store and wandered around for a couple of hours, not really shopping for anything. All I could think about were those words, hurled at me for the second time from a child of mine for whom I apparently could not give enough. An old friend used to say that if one person gave him negative feedback about himself, he took it with a grain of salt, but if he heard that same feedback from two people, he took it to heart. I guess that stuck with me because hearing a second child tell me the life I've given them amounts to a load of crap made me see myself more clearly as the half-ass person I've always known deep down I am.
Today I slept most of the day, then got up to watch the grandchildren for a while. I never got dressed or showered and now it's bedtime. I plan to crawl back under my covers tonight and welcome sleep. I wish I could sleep for a year--let my phone battery die and close my bedroom door, draw my curtains tight and hide, hide away.
In a fire safe on the top shelf of the hall closet, a will I drew up five years ago sits. It states that, should I meet an untimely death before my boy is 18, his sister Hannah will become his legal guardian. He loves her so much, and I see her working so hard at life, overcoming obstacles, diving towards her dreams. I wondered yesterday, as we drove home, whether my boy would feel happie.r and less like his life were crap had I chosen to forego my life-saving dialysis treatments five years ago? Did I, by fighting nature, deny him a better life?
I cannot know the answer to that. I chose to live and to keep trying at life, this boy of mine the only motivation that keeps me tethered to that machine or to this life. And yet, for all the effort, everything stares back at me, just a bunch of crap.
I get it. I woefully understand his point of view. I just don't know how to change it. I don't know how to be more than I am or how I can give more than I do. I hope and dream that life will throw me a bone and I'll get to see Charlie graduate from high school and go off to college. In my farthest and most wishful dreams, I imagine someday holding his first child in my arms. I know it's not likely to happen--that last tiny grandchild nestled in the crook of my arm, but I like to dream it anyway. I like to think we can at least ride the tide of crap to the day he's free of me and able to make a life he feels proud to live. Maybe he can overcome my dearth of ability to give him more than crap and maybe I'll get to witness it all. Either way, I hope for him.
Perhaps, if nothing more, my ineptitude will show him how to do better when he is grown. I hope it serves some purpose, because right now, looking up at the world from beneath this suffocating sea of failure, I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling pretty hopeless. Maybe the kids are right. Maybe this life, because of me, is nothing but a bunch of crap. Maybe that's all I can ever manufacture from my ever-shrinking ability to even provide for myself or my kid.
A stinking pile of crap.
