My Son The Clam
Ah… my son’s kid days! He was so easy to read! In fact, I didn’t have to “read” him at all. I knew instantly what was wrong at all times. He would even tell me!
“Mommy, I fell and scraped my knee!”
“Mooommm! The girls won’t let me play with them!”
“Hey Ma! That’s not fair! Dad said I could play video games before dinner at his house!”
“Mother, I’m hungry. I want pizza for dinner!”
It was fantastic!
It was 20 years ago. Well, okay, 10.
Then the dark times came. The teenage years. Hormones and heavy metal music pouring from every speaker-like orifice in the house - mostly from behind the perpetually closed door to an adolescent boycave - broken only by the sonic booms and blood-squishing-like sounds of Resident Evil on the X-Box.
By the way, don’t ask me how my son managed to turn his bedroom up here in Boston or my mother’s spare bedroom in Northern New Jersey into a fortress of doom every month and on school breaks. You’d think a teenager would require more than a couple days or a week to do that. Not the case. My son would walk into the house, mine or my mother’s, drop his stuff on the floor, kick off his shoes, and with a “Hi Grandma! Can you hook up the Playstation?” the smell of teen spirit would just ooze through the air.
Also, skip over the irony of me giving birth to a metalhead (I also married one - TheOmen, aka Damien, husband #2) after insisting to my boyfriend during my own teenage years that “pop is top!” I don’t know how that happened, or even I prefer Black Sabbath to Beyonce these days.
Sorry Queen Bey.
Moving on…
Even during his oozing, acne and angst-filled adolescence, I still had a pretty good idea what was going on in my son’s mind. I could tell when something was bothering him. I was myself an angsty adolescent once upon a time. I could pretty much guess what the matter was.
If I couldn’t guess, well, a teenager is still technically a child. I could rely on that child needing his mom to fix things, or at least believing I could. …and, I never did this, but if worse came to worst I could always pull the “I AM YOUR MOTHER. TELL ME WHAT IS WRONG SO I CAN FIX IT” card.
It never actually came to that, but it was an option.
Around JR’s 21st birthday, something began to change. Maybe I shouldn’t have given him TheOmen’s home brew to celebrate the occasion…I don’t know. All I do know is that over the last year or so my son has morphed from a human being into a clam. I literally cannot get the …grown ass man… to talk to me. He’s gone from talking…about anything, actually…to this:
“How was school today?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did something happen?”
“No…”
“Are you worried about graduation [from high school in June]?”
“No.”
“How are your roomates [at group home]?”
“Fine.”
“Are you sure nothing’s bothering you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
See! Clam!
This conversation takes place across all forms of communication: FaceTime, cellphone, and in person, and while my questions change - I like to liven things up a bit, maybe ask something less obvious like, “How did you sleep last night?” or “How was work today?” Sometimes instead of asking “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” I ask “How’s your Dad doing?”
Doesn’t matter. My son is a monosyllabic crustacean.
Even at the mall, checking out Hot Topic and the Lego store! It’s like a clam grew Levi-clad legs and cross trainers.
After the last repartee, I looked my son in the eyes - I’ve mastered the art of eye contact via video chat thanks to COVID. I do a great Mom-Stare. The furkids hear it through the phone and stop dead in their tracks.
My son just stared back at me and said, “Oooohhh kaaaayyyyeee!”
Clam!
At this point, I’d take the angst-oozing adolescent back.
Having been a 20-something, denim and kicks wearing clam myself 30 years ago, I know Leading Man #1 will come out of his shell in a few years. Meanwhile I make due with the Boxer Toddler and the Dramatic Dane. They tell me exactly what’s wrong - usually that’s one of them stealing the other’s Kong, but you know.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind if Ella suddenly sported an exoskeleton.
Oh well!
—CMR
#teenagers, #raisingboys, #motherhood
