Same As It Ever Was

Last week I dropped Will off at school. He's a sophomore now in college. My friend Lou Lou just dropped her daughter Olivia off at Tulane - a second generation who will live and breathe the walls of Josephine Louise dorm at Tulane University. Please god, let them be freshly painted.

I thought it would be easier this time, easier than before when Will was a freshman. His first summer back from college was a challenge. It's a strange time in a young man's life where he wants to do and be all things men do - or at least the fun things they do. But he's not quite old enough, he doesn't have enough money, he can't figure it out, women are difficult, cars are expensive. Strange times indeed. 

I'm reading a book called Lift by Kelly Corrigan at the random suggestion of a friend. It's a letter to her children to help them remember their young lives. In a way, this blog has been the same. Not all my posts are about our son Will, but I like to think the good ones are like:

Will, You Are Surrounded by Music 

The Makings of Mr. Right

In a World Without Earbuds

I have no real music skills, unlike most of the members of my family. Certainly, unlike Will. I don't play the piano. I'm just an okay singer. I do have one very unique musical talent however. I can remember the lyrics to many, many songs. Like the other day I burst into Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond. "I'd be inclined," he sings. That's a twisty phrase for song lyrics. It would have no place in today's songs, but Neil Diamond rocked those lyrics and his denim jumpsuits back in the day. 

I saw Neil Diamond in the airport one time. I'd just spent a weekend with my Tulane roommate Lou Lou bumming off all the other recently graduated kids who were living in Aspen. We'd been to see Lyle Lovett and his Large Band featuring the super talented singer Francine Reed. We'd biked up to see Hunter S. Thompson's cabin in the woods, slightly fearing for our lives because it was rumored he shot at lookyloos. 

When it was time to head home, I cabbed it to the tiny Aspen airport. And that's when I saw him -- bathed in a beautiful light, talking on a pay phone no less, was Neil Diamond in full-on denim -- denim bell bottoms, denim jacket with sheepskin collar, denim shirt. Sweet Caroline, I couldn't believe it was him. I was suddenly back in 1970's Texas listening to my dad's vinyl. 

In New Orleans, I was lucky to see live music all the time. One of the most amazing concerts I saw while at Tulane - and there were many like Bonnie Raitt and David Crosby jamming at the Maple Leaf with Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes on percussion. Anyway, one of the most amazing concerts I saw was David Byrne's Burning Down the House tour. Incredible show. Incredible performances. Thinking of that show takes me back to college days. I don't want to romanticize that time or  gloss over the tough parts, but that was some kind of fun that night. 

The song lyrics I thought of as I dropped Will off at college were these words from The Talking Heads' more subdued song Once in a Lifetime:

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Look where my hand was
Time isn't holding up
Time isn't after us

This year Will is in school in St. Paul, MN - quite a departure from New Orleans. It was his choice and I think a very mature decision based on how he felt after his first year. I've never been to Minnesota until just now. People couldn't be nicer, just as you would expect from Midwesterners. I did feel that I shouldn't burst into tears there, on the street for example. Minnesotans don't cry. So I waited until I got back home and had myself a nice outburst at JFK airport in parking terminal 2. Ah New York, the land of crazy and plenty of crying. 

It doesn't get any easier, dropping your kid off 20 hours away in a place you've never been until last week. It's tough when they're freshman and when they're sophomores. Maybe it gets easier when they're a junior. For now, it's just me and the old man and our dog moping around. Same as it ever was, indeed. 

Just the Way You Are

This sign makes me sad. I think it's supposed to be sweet, but it makes me sad. 

I saw it on a walk through my neighborhood today. At first, I thought what a cute idea. Then I looked closer and saw that small children wrote their 2017 resolutions on this board. One says, "Stop sucking my thumb." The other says, "To focus better at school." And that makes me sad. 

I feel like knocking on my neighbor's door and saying, "Hey I sucked my thumb until I was driving and I hide chocolate bars in a small Igloo cooler in the pantry. I hide them from MYSELF!"  

But I totally get it. We want our kids to do better. "You can do better!" we say. I think it comes from a place of wanting better for them, wanting what we think we lack or didn't have or should've done differently. 

Now that Will is away at college, I'm thinking about all the things I wish I hadn't done as a parent. I think about what I put in his head with my "you can do better" prodding. 

Maybe, instead of worrying about the next thing and the next thing, I should've just sat in the grass and watched him play baseball. Or let him use every single dish in our home to bake his psychedelic, 7 different food coloring birthday cake with his friends. Or let him take hour long showers and run out all the hot water because at least I could hear him singing. Or not lose my shit when he forgot something again, because maybe what he forgot was never important to him or really even matters in the long run.

Will is an awesome kid. But I often think he is an awesome kid in spite of us. That our constant wanting better for him should've been, "You're pretty awesome just the way you are." Period. Mic drop.

In a World Without Earbuds

Eighteen years ago today, I was in labor with our son Will. It was a tough labor. It went on for over 30 hours, even after I was induced with pitocin. Pitocin is pure crap by the way. Don't believe the lies.

I saw one shift of nurses, and then another, and then the first ones came back again. I went through three OBs and regrettably ended up in delivery with the one I referred to as "Dr. Hair Plugs." That guy was the worst. He said at the bitter end, "Maybe we should've done a C-section after all." I would like to just go on record here and say you should never tell a woman that after hours and hours of labor.

It was not a shining moment for me. It was not a moment bathed in pure light as I saw my little boy for the first time. The doctors were worried about Will and the trauma of such a long delivery so they whisked him away from me. They sent a lung team in to check him. The nurses scrubbed him down and put him under warm lights. I could see him from a distance. He had a beautiful head of black hair. He was okay.  He was healthy.

I saw my husband Rod put his hand on Will's chest and it covered his entire torso. I remember thinking when we brought him home -- a nearly 10 pound baby is actually pretty tiny. Please God don't let me break him.

They did finally hand Will to me, just the way you see in movies. Swaddled in a little baby bun. Our beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy. We immediately nicknamed him "Tiny Elvis" for his amazing head of hair.

Tomorrow, Will turns 18. I'm trying so hard to keep it together and to remember the little boy who is now a junior man. I want to be happy for him and accepting of him and start to let him go. 

This morning he was complaining about his lost earbuds again. I believe this is two pairs of earbuds in one week, a world record here at the Risher-Morton house. I've come up with an idea for a new reality show where young adults are dropped on a desert island without earbuds. "In a World Without Earbuds" teens will be forced to talk to one another or make earbuds out of coconut shells like on Gilligan's Island. This is what I think about so that I can pretend this isn't happening. But it's all happening. And off he will go. I'm gonna predict he'll lose 17 sets of earbuds as a freshman at Loyola New Orleans. 

Yesterday I spoke to my good friend Leslie and we caught up on all the college news. I told her Will is going to New Orleans and that I was worried, because I know the dangers of New Orleans as a former Tulane grad. She said something so sensible to me, something like, "If he's a good student now and a good kid, wouldn't he continue to be that in New Orleans?" 

I said, "Leslie that's crazy talk!" And then I laughed. Because she's right. Or as my mom often says, "Honey, he's cooked." Or baked. Basically, he's done. He's made. He's Will. 

NB: This is Will with Lars Ulrich from Metallica at Berklee last summer. I'm not Facebook friends with Lars or else I would totally tag him in this post. Rock on!

Act As If This Is Your Last Chance

My friend Julie and I had a pretty funny conversation this afternoon, or it seemed funny to us. Through crackling cell phones we had a series of "old people" exchanges as follows,

"I'm hot," I yelled.
"What?" she yelled back.
"I'm hot," I yelled.
"What?" she yelled back.

This went on for at least a minute. A glimpse of things to come. 

At the same time, Will, my son was trying to tell me something about his scholarship money from Loyola in New Orleans. Some extra financial aid had appeared out of nowhere. A gift from the heavens. Great. Fantastic. At last, we can relax.

Then I opened the mail. You, Will,  have 8 absences, of which you are only allowed 12 in English for the entire year.  Or you lose credit and I don't know, maybe lose your biggest scholarship opportunity at Loyola. That's $15,000. 

I panicked. I got mad. It's like all the stages in Death and Dying by Kubler-Ross. Really panicking because it is frightening trying to get a kid into college these days and then figure out how to pay for it. 

I'm trying to be Irish Zen like my friend Lou Lou Mulderrig or my other friend Mike Casey. Just breathe, take it easy and know everything will be okay.  But that's not really how I tend to think. I tend to think the worst, predict the worst, fret about the worst case scenario that I know lies just around the bend. 

Until the worst case scenario happens, and then my thinking switches into another level of panic something like, "What if this is it?" I've experienced these moments under positive circumstances, for example when you see a landscape like parts of Texas and Louisiana, or pretty much anywhere on the Pacific Coast Highway. It's overwhelming, the feeling of smallness and finite and wow. This is really it.

And sometimes it happens in an emergency room, when I see my son attached to tubes and oxygen meters. Or when the vet finds Daisy, our beloved Doodle, has swollen lymph nodes. Or when, or when. It happens all the time. 

Bargaining kicks in. Dear god, I will do this thing, if you'll do this one for me. And the one thing becomes another, and another, until I would sell my soul to have one more chance. As I sit here thinking about how to tell Will that the absences in English could sink his ship, I try to also think of what I would say if I had one last chance. 

"Dear Will," I hope I would say. "It has been my great honor and pleasure to be your mom. You have a kind heart, a wonderful curiosity, a strong body and voice, a magnetism that could work in your favor if used wisely, an oblivious in the clouds nature that I think has to do with the music in your head, crazy confidence, less than exceptional work ethic and organizational habits. You would give a friend your last dollar and way too much of your time, so choose them wisely."

You asked me today how Dad and I raised an awesome kid like you -- not your words but I won't repeat them because you're a teenager and sometimes you say stupid stuff.

I think your dad and I made conscious decisions about choosing each other and not making the not-so-great relationship decisions we'd made in the past. We avoided certain patterns that were not healthy for either of us. We also discussed up front very important issues like how to discipline, how to talk to you, what to do about media (or too much of it), getting outside to build strength, what was important for your development. Most importantly, and THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, we wanted to keep an honest, open relationship with you. So we made a decision early on that if you told us the truth, we wouldn't punish you.

From what I've seen with your friends, this has sometimes been perceived as a positive and often times a negative. Some parents don't want to know what's happening. We do.

Full circle back to my typical worst case scenario thinking. You can't miss any more classes Will or you'll risk your scholarship, or worse, graduation. I'm seeing Poseidon Adventure scenes now in my head - the old one with Shelly Winters. 

But what's really important is to put this in context. I need to spend more time thinking like it's my last chance. When I think that something is finite, when we're in the ER with you because you've been bitten by a dog, fallen down a water slide, are overcome by asthma, then I start to think clearly about what is important. 

Dear Will. It has been my great honor and pleasure to be your mom. 

(NB This is one of my favorite videos of you singing at Greenfield Hills Congregational)