I’m discovering that I’m just as mediocre at posting
regularly in this blog as I am at parenting, but I have decided that
consistency is of paramount importance, so here goes my annual post, haha. I’d
vow to post more consistently and regularly, but that wouldn’t be consistent,
so I won’t lie. And I’m not a Philosophy professor, but I think I just made a
logical fallacy. Or illogical. Either way, let’s move on.
While my gargantuan monster of a 16 year old continues to
grow (he’s now 6’2” and has feet that are the last shoe size available in
stores), my 11-year old grew up undetected. Well, other parents might have
noticed but I was too busy with 1) being mediocre, 2) redirecting every
possible comment uttered by my 16 year old that began with “I don’t want to be
offensive, but….” (hint: what comes next most assuredly WILL be offensive), and
3) engaging in a never-ending driving loop between home and the grocery store
to keep the gargantuan child fed and sated (apparently two different things).
So it shouldn’t surprise you that my revelation that my baby
son was actually growing up occurred in my home-away-from-home, the grocery
store. So there we were, in Giant, in the seltzer aisle (they sell other
beverages in that aisle, but we’re so obsessed with seltzer that that’s what we
call it), and my 16 year old says “Ma, [#2] got to grab Y’s ass the other day.”
Background: Y is a girl, and she and my youngest claim that they’re “going
together,” which apparently means hugging each other goodbye at aftercare and telling
everyone they are “going together.” Now a new activity has popped up and at
first, none of this computed in my head. So I pondered and asked a question I
will regret for the rest of my life—a question I certainly did not want to know
the answer to and so one I should not have asked. I said “On purpose? Like, was
it an accident?” And then I encountered the moment I can never take back, the
moment that will burn in my eyes forever: that moment when your last child, for
whatever reason the one who just will never grow up in your head, says “of
course it was on purpose! We were hugging and then I just went in like this.”
And he mimics that perennial ass grab that men have been doing since the
beginning of time (I’m willing to bet there is actual sufficient numerical data
to support this claim), where he wraps his hands around her and goes right into
her cheeks and squeezes. And he thrusted just a bit. My brain popped. Literally. Like a case of seltzer
cans at once. Everything went black for a minute. My oldest recognized my shock and smartly said “You shouldn’t ask
a question you don’t want to know the answer to.” Except for ending that
sentence with a preposition, he’s exactly right.
Although it was hard for me to take my oldest becoming
man-like, it seemed to happen a little later and was accompanied by a rapid
growth spurt that sent him towering over me. This kid, my last hope, my last
one, is only up to my shoulder. I wasn’t ready. I had no warning. And now he’s
moping around because he’s getting moved to another school this month for
middle school (ok, I’ll fess up, because that sentence sounds like he’s getting
moved by an external force; in fact, his other mother and I are moving him to
another school)—a decision that, apparently, will ruin him and his future with
Y. Never mind that this is the best academic opportunity we could find in
public schools in the City. Never mind that we know this is the best move for
him. No. He spends hours on the phone with her, off and on, lamenting that they
won’t be in school together. Planning what high schools they will go to IN
THREE YEARS so they can be together again. I must have blocked out the first
love drama with the first kid, or maybe just pretended it wasn’t happening, or
maybe was able to complement it with some good old Lego building with the
second kid so it didn’t seem to fill the house with D.R.A.M.A. But here we are,
suffocating under a cloud of “it’s not fair”s and “you’re ruining my life”s. Before,
I used the younger kid as my Great Drama Deflection Shield. But I don’t have
another younger kid to deflect this. My first thought this morning was that
maybe I’m not too old at 50 to have another baby. That’s crazy, right? Right?
