Meet you in the bathroom.

To all you college-dropping-off parents, bless you. I feel you. Buy yourself an extra coffee (or whatever suits your fancy). Dessert. A new pair of shoes, even. I know it’s hard. If you are driving home with a younger sibling, though, consider stopping for a milkshake or special treat for the one(s) left behind. Because, honestly, that’s the one. The relationship that’s the hardest to see stretched over the miles.

My kiddos needed each other way more than I accounted for when we drove down The Hill on this weekend 2014. They have grown up on each other’s sides. For the last sixteen years, when one was in the doghouse with, us, they were meeting in the bathroom between their bedrooms and talking about us. They did their plotting and scheming and planning and whining standing at that bathroom sink. Every night, long ago, when they both lived here, without fail, they yelled through that bathroom at one another. “Night, A!” “Night, Mal! Love you.” “Love you. Say your prayers.” “Okay, night!” When advice was needed from someone more ‘sensible’ that mom or dad, that bathroom became the spot.

It was a bathroom counter turned strategy room, oasis, counselor’s couch, meeting space, and wailing wall. When she left for college four summers ago, we all missed her, but none of us missed her in the way her brother did. Their bathroom conversations became fewer and farther between, but they became more exciting with tales from the sorority house and tailgates to high school hallways and student sections. They also became more adult with questions about future plans, relationships, and the meaning of life in general.

Currently, there are plans being made for weekend trips to visit one another. There are plans being made for their futures that only the other is privy to. They are even playing a game back and forth in the letters they are mailing to and from boot camp! Although they are growing up and looking ahead to days out from under our roof, it is evident those days include one another.

This summer has been a new experience. With Mal home and A gone, the tables have turned, and the bathroom remains deafeningly silent. This I know. When A comes home, their conversations will be long and full of stories they have stored up to share. I also know this. Although Mal will be away in grad school, the bathroom will be in action again on some weekends and holidays. My heart will be happy, and the laundry room will be full.

So when you get that last pillow fluffed, the last command strip placed just right, and the Keurig in the exact most functional spot, step back and admire your work. Not your Southern living dorm room decorating genius, but your sibling raising genius. THAT. That is your greatest accomplishment in the room–the love your little has for his big and vice versa. Be proud in knowing their hearts ache, too. They will miss each other in ways we don’t understand. Step back and let them have a moment. Be confident in knowing as you drive away that you have raised them to Do life. Love it. Keep it real. 

Just Call Me Frankie

Warning: Long post ahead. If you don’t watch ABC’s “The Middle”, this might not mean everything to you that it does to me. Go ahead and read it anyway, though. 🙂 Also, there are lots of parentheses (I had lots of side thoughts as I wrote this. Sorry!)

My favorite television series, ABC’s “The Middle” just ended last week. If you haven’t been watching it since the beginning, find it on one of those subscription channels all the kids watch and get started on it. It broke my heart for so many reasons.

1. I am a member of the Heck family. My house is a wreck like that.
2. We have our quirky niches within the family.
3. We have a terribly messy house with weird things in need of repair. (I mean, there isn’t a hole in the wall that my kids walk through to chat, but we have our things.)
4. No one whispers like Brick, but I’m not discounting that my kids are weird, overreacting, lazy, smart, normal, and love-each-other-but-don’t-get-all-mushy-about-it.

So when it ended, I felt like I was closing a chapter of life. Screeching tire sounds!!! WHAT?! That’s a giant case of art imitating life!

We are about 24 hours from dropping Avery off with his recruiter for the last time as a civilian. On Monday, he will be sworn in as an official marine recruit. I can’t even describe what the inside of my body is doing. My ears feel stuffed up and full like I’ve been snotty crying. My throat seems very narrow as if I could choke. My eyes seem to be stuck together in the corners like I just woke up. What is this?!

I feel like Frankie, “The Middle” mom, did last week.  Here’s the scene:

The oldest, Axl, (God bless his unmotivated self) has secured a job halfway across the country in Colorado. Axl is all about not making a big scene with goodbyes. Being the stellar mom that she wants to be and we all know she is, Frankie decides not to get all weepy and clingy in his last month at home (which turns out to be four days because not only is Axl unmotivated, he doesn’t know the order of the months of the year. Again, God bless him.). Frankie suppresses all of her own sadness while madly preparing Axl to leave. All the while, the rest of the family is preparing their emotional “moment” with him.

So, just call me Frankie. I want to be the strong mom Avery (I think) needs me to be as he walks away in the airport. I mean, do I want him to (this is completely self-flattery) feel guilty by crying (translated weeping and gnashing of teeth)? On the other hand, do I want to give him the impression that his walking away to train for the most exciting, dangerous, fulfilling job ever is no big deal for me? That I don’t feel a little sad that I won’t hear his voice for 13 weeks?

I do know this: Axl was excited for his big move into adulthood, and Avery is excited the same. If you know anything about my son it is that his expression of emotion doesn’t very often move too far from neutral (or the middle–See what I did there?). If he says, “That dinner was good, ” you want to serve that one often. He loved it. If he says, “That’s not really my style,” don’t even consider asking again if he wants a pair of Sanuks or cargo pants. So when, at Thanksgiving, I heard from his own mouth the words, “I’m excited,” in response to, “Are you ready for the Marines?” I knew he had found his calling.

Like Mike and Frankie, Kevin and I love our kids, but we didn’t raise them to live with us forever. We raised them to be contributing members to society, motivated people with a heart for whatever cause fires their souls. So when Avery came home announcing he was really going to do this thing he has talked about since he was two years old, I couldn’t get all hysterical (a la Sue Heck) and say no. In my best supportive Frankie way, I have done the whole thing. I’ve joined the Marine Moms group, learned from the Poolee family group, just got added to Bravo Company (that’s his company at boot) group. I’ve bought a garden flag, a tee shirt, a wristband, and thin Marine line tennis shoes. And just like I learned the rules to scoring cross country and the lingo for baseball and basketball, I have been studying the Dos and Don’ts, the Ins and Outs, and the terminology of the Marines.

And just like Frankie, I have tried to make his last moments as a kid in our house full of all of his favorite things. I fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and made green peas for a bird’s nest (look it up). We’ve done lunch at Smokin’ in Style, breakfast at Greg’s, tamale spreads from McClard’s, and all his other requests.  Somehow I wonder if all those gestures aren’t just as much for Mike, uh Kevin, and me.

All the butterflies of a kid at Christmas, pre-wedding jitters, night before babies are born, is what I’m feeling now. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I can’t wait for him to leave. What I’m saying is I’m excited for him to leave–not excited that he is leaving, just exciting that he is getting to leave.

This I also know: He must be feeling all those ways, too, just like Axl did. As Axl made time for a few of those “moments” with others, Avery has made those with his friends and each family member lately. I know he is excited, and because of that, like Frankie, I am excited. I know he has waited eleven months since enlisting last July for this exact moment. I just didn’t realize how soon it would come. So, in good old Frankie style, I will be trying to hold it together for the next couple of days until that moment comes when I can’t anymore, and I totally break down because in the end, he’s still my baby, my son, my responsibility. And pretty soon, he’s going to be my Marine. Oorah!

If you see me any time in the next few days, bless you. I can’t promise which Frankie, uh Jana, you’re going to get! Just remind me of my mantra: Do life. Love it. Keep it Real.{whispers} “real. . .”

 

 

≈