Mother guilt 2
3.9.09
Sean was home this weekend. Alex picked him up Friday night after he and I saw Claire’s high school play. I went on to chaperone a cast party, and by the time Claire and I got home, Sean and Alex were fast asleep. On Saturday, sleep got the better of me, and then exercise, and then doing all kinds of necessary things before the Saturday show… so I didn’t get the chance that I had wanted to chat with Sean during the day. He enjoyed the play, but had some melancholy over what used to be part of his life, too, and now isn’t. He was even invited to attend the Saturday-night cast party, but he knew that that’s not how it’s done when you’re not in the show.
Instead, Sean came home with me and helped me to unload the car of all the gear that I schlepp around as one of the “drama mamas” — which was much appreciated, believe me — and then we finally had a chance to sit down and talk. He leaned against me on the couch, and we sat and talked in the semi-darkness. We caught up on his social goings-on mostly — nothing terribly heavy — and it was very nice.
I felt sad, though. I had been so looking forward to having him home, and then I let life things get in the way of spending quality time with him until that moment. I won’t claim that I “didn’t have time,” though — I’m trying to teach him, in fact, that we have time for everything that we truly care about, and anytime that we say “I didn’t have time,” we really mean that something else was our priority. Maybe that something else should have been our priority, or maybe it shouldn’t have been — only the individual can decide that. But the point is, I had let things get in the way of seeing Sean earlier in the weekend, so I didn’t want to make that same mistake again.
Our time together came to an end when Claire called and said she was ready to be picked up after the party. Sean had volunteered to go back out into the foggy night to do it, and I was grateful. It had been a long, tiring, but satisfying day — and we’d be losing an hour on the time change.
I wasn’t the only one who was occupied elsewhere on Saturday. Alex and Claire had been occupied with other things, too, and Sean had worked on homework from the little “encampment” that he sets up with his laptop in the family room when he’s home. So, it’s not like everyone else had dropped what they were doing to be with Sean, but still… I had twangs of Mother Guilt. Alex and Sean did have dinner together on Saturday, but again, I was off to the play to do parent things there. I missed the dinner and felt sad about that, too.
Sunday it was Sean’s turn to be away from the rest of us. He left before I got up to go do a series of things with a friend who’d arrived back for her spring break this week. They spent most of the day together, and he came home in the late afternoon to pack up his stuff to return to Chad for the last week before spring break — one that he’s counting on being a lot lighter than the last. I took him back, and I used the drive as an opportunity to spew out some pearls of wisdom about friendship — our main topic of conversation Saturday night.
I also realized then that my sadness and Mother Guilt were probably unnecessary. We all have our own lives, and we all live them. We can’t just push everything aside for Sean any more than he can or will push everything aside for the rest of us. Part of it, too, was knowing that he will be home again on Friday, but this time, for a week. And then after that, he reminded me, there would be the three-plus months of the summer not so far behind.
The vision of the summer seemed so glimmering… The thing that had seemed so far off in August — having Sean living among us again on a daily basis, at least for one more summer — is now not so far off any more. But I didn’t want to get all caught up in the deliciousness of that because it, too, will come to an end just as it did last summer. It always will. It must.
But all in all, I realized that things were probably just as they should have been: we were living our lives separately, yet in community… coming and going… no one was freaking out or bending unnaturally. We were just being happy living together.
Instead, Sean came home with me and helped me to unload the car of all the gear that I schlepp around as one of the “drama mamas” — which was much appreciated, believe me — and then we finally had a chance to sit down and talk. He leaned against me on the couch, and we sat and talked in the semi-darkness. We caught up on his social goings-on mostly — nothing terribly heavy — and it was very nice.
I felt sad, though. I had been so looking forward to having him home, and then I let life things get in the way of spending quality time with him until that moment. I won’t claim that I “didn’t have time,” though — I’m trying to teach him, in fact, that we have time for everything that we truly care about, and anytime that we say “I didn’t have time,” we really mean that something else was our priority. Maybe that something else should have been our priority, or maybe it shouldn’t have been — only the individual can decide that. But the point is, I had let things get in the way of seeing Sean earlier in the weekend, so I didn’t want to make that same mistake again.
Our time together came to an end when Claire called and said she was ready to be picked up after the party. Sean had volunteered to go back out into the foggy night to do it, and I was grateful. It had been a long, tiring, but satisfying day — and we’d be losing an hour on the time change.
I wasn’t the only one who was occupied elsewhere on Saturday. Alex and Claire had been occupied with other things, too, and Sean had worked on homework from the little “encampment” that he sets up with his laptop in the family room when he’s home. So, it’s not like everyone else had dropped what they were doing to be with Sean, but still… I had twangs of Mother Guilt. Alex and Sean did have dinner together on Saturday, but again, I was off to the play to do parent things there. I missed the dinner and felt sad about that, too.
Sunday it was Sean’s turn to be away from the rest of us. He left before I got up to go do a series of things with a friend who’d arrived back for her spring break this week. They spent most of the day together, and he came home in the late afternoon to pack up his stuff to return to Chad for the last week before spring break — one that he’s counting on being a lot lighter than the last. I took him back, and I used the drive as an opportunity to spew out some pearls of wisdom about friendship — our main topic of conversation Saturday night.
I also realized then that my sadness and Mother Guilt were probably unnecessary. We all have our own lives, and we all live them. We can’t just push everything aside for Sean any more than he can or will push everything aside for the rest of us. Part of it, too, was knowing that he will be home again on Friday, but this time, for a week. And then after that, he reminded me, there would be the three-plus months of the summer not so far behind.
The vision of the summer seemed so glimmering… The thing that had seemed so far off in August — having Sean living among us again on a daily basis, at least for one more summer — is now not so far off any more. But I didn’t want to get all caught up in the deliciousness of that because it, too, will come to an end just as it did last summer. It always will. It must.
But all in all, I realized that things were probably just as they should have been: we were living our lives separately, yet in community… coming and going… no one was freaking out or bending unnaturally. We were just being happy living together.
