Empty Nesting

One week to the day of our new life in the Empty Nest. Or so folks keep saying when they hear that not only has Owen returned to college in Oregon (a normal, expected development) but that Hugh is now in boarding school in Mississippi (a really weird, say what? kind of thing). But I'm uncertain. Is it really Empty Nestdom, given that Hugh can come home every weekend? Shoot, it takes me three days to clean up the chaos he leaves behind, and then it's just a brief breath and here he is again, in all his six-foot, 200-pound, chaotic adolescent glory. Not really an Empty Nest as much as a temporarily-vacated-but- soon-to-be-reclaimed-and-reconquered-and-laid-waste nest.

And here I am in the nest, amidst piles of extra tee-shirts and mismatched socks and unnecessary jackets and too-tight khakis as well as bikes and stuffed animals and torn posters and old sports medals and other boy leavings, and I'm online checking Hugh's grades and calling him to remind him to wear his retainer and worrying that he's going to have headaches because he left his contact lens behind and I'm writing myself notes to fill and mail Owen's prescritptions and to check airfares so Owen can come to a family wedding in October and I'm wondering if he has a toaster and a crockpot in the house he's now sharing and should I ship those and is he remembering to irrigate the holes left by his wisdom teeth surgery and I'm reminding Keith that we need to check on the revisions to Owen's financial aid package and did he write the second check for Hugh's youth group trip next summer and and and-- good lord, for an empty nest, it's pretty cluttered in here.

With apologies to Martin Luther

So Hugh is now in boarding school. Catholic boys' boarding school. The Brothers of the Sacred Heart, to be precise. Hugh's "prefect" is one such Brother. In his first year at the school, Brother T is a 60-ish, homely, gentle, other-worldly kind of guy who fatally admitted to Hugh during check-in at the residence hall that he had purchased his very first cell phone just a few days earlier. Oh dear. Do Catholics still believe in Purgatory? If so, then I imagine Brother T will have shaved a considerable amount off his purgatorial allotment by living in close quarters with a group of 16-year-olds for a year.

Hugh reported the following rather bizarre cross-cultural/generational encounter: In the middle of one of the introductory hall meetings with  Brother T, one of the boys farted very loudly and of course all the other boys began to snicker and moan and generally descend to being, well, boys. Brother T responded with indignation. Such a public display of a private need was, he informed his little flock, the sign of gross ignorance. A boy who farted out loud would end up "flipping burgers" for a living, the brother warned, if he didn't shape up and rein himself in. Brother T then shifted into confessional mode: "Take me. I haven't farted out loud since 1972. Now I admit, it probably has caused me some trouble with my digestive tract, but it's been worth it."

Oh. Wow. Suddenly I realize how totally not a Catholic I am. Since Hugh told me this story, I've been farting loudly and with great gusto. Never before have I linked passing gas to Protestant principle, but now with every public butt burp, I feel I'm striking a blow against asceticism and the damage it has done to Christians for centuries.

Here I fart; I cannot do otherwise.

Dreaming

According to one of my social worker/counselor friends (I have many--I reside in a social worker-friendly habitat), every person in my dream is actually me. Same for you, by the way: she says that everyone in your dreams is actually you, some facet of you, some aspect of you that needs attention.

I dunno. I mean, I see the therapeutic possibilities, but take the following: Several days ago I dropped off 16-year-old Hugh at boarding school for the first time, an action about which I was and am profoundly ambivalent. "Boarding school," in my world, translates into "CODE RED! CODE RED! Family breaking down!" Or, more succinctly: "This mom is Bad." So that night, I dreamt.

In my dream, Hugh is a baby again, a chubby little guy in a onesie sitting in a baby carrier and sucking his hand. I go through a doorway into an empty room and put down the carrier, then turn back to the first room to get the rest of my things. I get distracted; there are lots of people; I have to answer questions; it's hard to push through the crowds. . . and when I finally make it back to the room where I set down Hugh, I discover it wasn't a room. It was a train car, and the train has left. He's gone and I can't find him. I'm screaming and running and trying to get someone's attention--I've lost my baby! I've lost my baby!-- but no one listens and he's gone.

Now, should I read that dream as telling me something about two different aspects of myself? Couldn't it be, isn't it, simply about me and Hugh, about the incredibly complicated love a mom bears for her teenaged son, about this new phase we find ourselves in?

And then there are my favorite dreams (so much better than the baby-losing ones). Often set in a place from my past--the house I grew up in, my high school gym, the alley behind my aunt and grandmother's two-flat in Cicero--in these dreams, my dead ones are alive, as they were at their best. But I'm me, now. These dreams are always ordinary--nothing horrifying or unsettling. Just ordinary, apart from the fact that 51-year-old me is hanging out with my 44-year-old dad or sitting over coffee with my 70-year-old grandma or shouting at the latest inane antics of the Conservative government with my much older beloved professor in his London flat, except we're now much closer in age.

Should I be embarrassed to admit that, superstitious as it may sound, I view these dreams as, well, as essentially visits? OK, yes, I should be embarrassed. I know that. While I do believe in some form of afterlife, I don't believe the dead come visiting. Really, I don't. And yet. . . the fact is that I experience these dreams, these moments outside space and time, these splashes of amazing grace, as just a bit more time, another chance to visit with the folks. The key is the ordinariness of it all.

Well. . . maybe also that I don't fuck anything up, that I don't get distracted, that I don't fail to see something crucial, that I don't lose any babies. I spend time with folks I love and I get it right.

Hey, Hugh, I've been dreaming about you. I'm dreaming I find you, baby. I'm dreaming I get it right.

Astigmatized

Annual eye check-up today. Sick and tired of hunting for reading glasses (which, let me hasten to point out, I need only when I have my contacts in--when my contacts aren't in, I can read just fine--'course my contaccts are always in because without them I can't see more than a foot in front of me but hey, nothing actually wrong with my reading vision, dammit, I'm not that old, I'm just near-sighted, like all us nerdy young people), I demanded those new omni-vision disposable soft contact lenses--the ones that  combine close-up, medium, and far-away vision--you can see everything all the time and then you just throw the damn things away and pop in a new pair.

So my friends tell me.

I wouldn't know. My eye doctor won't let me have them. Apparently my astigmatism is too pronounced. I'm doomed to reading glasses--to the fruitless rummaging through my handbag only to remember that of course I took that pair out at breakfast, to having to ask Keith read restaurant menus aloud to me, to having to stop lectures and ask students what time it is because I can't see the numbers on my watch or  my cell phone, to apologizing at meetings because I can't read the agenda, to gormlessly squinting at receipts trying to decipher where I'm supposed to sign. . . . to being a friggin' totally annoying utterly stereotypical old lady. Sigh.

Lavender

Our marriage has come of age. Yesterday was our 21st wedding anniversary. You'd think you'd know someone after 21 years. I thought I did, anyway. And then, this afternoon, in comes Keith all excited about the great big package that came in the mail. "Look," he says gleefully, and I look and I think, "Good lord, who is this man?" There, on a bed of those crinkly paper gift-bag stuffing thingies, lounged several large bottles of Essential Oils lavender products--oils and lotions and shampoos and what-not.

Really?? He actually initiated, took time out to, went to the effort of, buying Essential Oils products? Honestly, I thought there was some kind of rule against such a thing, that one could only get this sort of stuff as a present, usually from people who don't know you very well and so haven't a clue as to what to get you. "Yeah," he enthused, "don't you remember we got some once from Anne? And I really liked it so I went online and there was this website!"

Years ago, I got tenure. And I stunned Keith by coming home and announcing that now I was going to enroll in a cake decorating course. It totally threw him for a loop. He couldn't get over it: how could he be married to me and yet have no inkling whatsoever that I had some inner desire to learn how to make icing roses and fondant animals.

Maybe this is why, ideally, we marry for the long haul. So we can keep shocking each other. So, anyway, excuse me. I have to go coat myself in lavender oil.

Let's Shed Less Light on That Subject

After weeks and weeks of making do with the bit of natural light that comes through the bathroom window and the bit of artificial light produced by two small sconces on either side of the mirror, I finally got around to persuading Hugh to haul in the ladder and replace the bulbs in the overhead fixture.

Dang.

New national plan: we'd both reduce our electricity consumption and prevent massive damage to the well-being of millions of middle-aged women by removing all the overhead lightbulbs in all the bathrooms in the United States. One small step for woman, one giant leap for womankind.

Mouse Murder

Hugh has murdered two mice. Not invasive, threatening rodent-y creatures, mind you, but harmless little pet mice. Last Friday he and his friend, fooling around at the mall, decided to buy a little spotted pet mouse for $2.98. They played with it awhile and then, bored, let it loose in the nearby empty lot--and thus doomed the poor petshop mouse to a quick yet assuredly painful death. When Hugh told me, I calmly, via the Socratic method and much gentle probing and careful guiding, led him to see how wrong it is to use a living creature and then discard it.

If only. Of course I went ballistic, shrieking and wailing at him about ethics and responsibility while he grimaced and sighed.

Three days later, Hugh brings home another tiny mouse. "It's a present for Lindsay," he says. (I have no idea who Lindsay is.) He sets up a box, complete with wood shavings and a little food bowl and a water bottle and lots of toilet paper tubes. Yesterday, he tells me that the mouse kept jumping up and biting him, so he let it loose down the street.

Depressed and disconcerted, I poured out the tale to my Nail Lady. (Increasingly, the nail corner of the salon serves as my confessional, and Laurie as my priest.) Laurie listened quietly, then put down her file, covered my hand with hers, and said gently, "You know, this doesn't mean he's going to grow up to be a serial killer."

Sedative or Stimulant

Have you seen those tv commercials for the new Infiniti car: "Luxury can be a sedative [snoring couple in plush leather seats of expensive car]. . . OR a stimulant [Infiniti zooms ahead through wild landscape]." Clearly we're supposed to opt for the stimulating Infiniti, but, umm, who buys Infinitis? I would assume, given the price range (upper $30,00-upper 40,000s--doncha just love Google?) and the style of the vehicle, that we're not talking 21-year-old guys but rather middle-aged folks. Like me, except with lots more money. Now perhaps money makes these folks not at all like me, a different species entirely. But if not, what a stupid ad campaign. Sleeping in those seats looks way more appealing to folks like me than zipping around those corners. We can always zip, but how often can we sleep?

Checklist

So, it's true, thought I, as I upchucked vast quantities of foul-tasting fluid in the wee hours of this morning: the "prep" for a colonoscopy is horrid. Definitely true.

I wasn't supposed to be upchucking the fluid, of course; I was supposed to expel it from the other end. Nevertheless, despite my body's refusal to follow instructions, the colonoscopy went ahead as scheduled. And, all you colonoscopy virgins out there, let not your hearts be troubled, be ye not afraid: there's light at the end of the tunnel. So to speak. Perhaps tunnel imagery isn't the best in this context. Anyway, the actual procedure itself is quite marvellous, because you get the most groovy drugs. I've felt wonderfully loopy and at peace with the world for much of the day. (And I now am the proud owner of a series of photos of my healthy colon. Blown up and framed, they'll add a certain something to the front hallway.)

Plus I feel like I can now check off another item on my To Do list for growing old(er):
Stop having periods. Check.
Start watching weight. Check.
Cover up the grey roots. Check.
Develop embarrassing expertise in skin care products. Check.
Routinize nose and chin hair maintenance. Check.
Get colonoscopy. Check.

My mother does not have and never had such a list. When I told her I had a colonoscopy scheduled, she was appalled. "Why? What's wrong?" And when I explained nothing was wrong, that this was simply standard procedure, she was even more appalled. "They can't make you, can they?" This is a woman who truly does not understand the concept of preventive medicine. She's never had a pap smear, and her one and only mammogram convinced her that she should steer clear of all such things forevermore. "Whatever you're going to die of, you'll die of," she says cheerfully.

She's 81 and only just stopped roller-skating. So much for checklists.