Good stuff
5.10.09
Alex and I met Sean last night for a theater performance, and it was really good to see him. Plus, the event was marked by several milestones on his part: he hadn’t forgotten about our date; he’d ridden his bike and had found the theater; and he’d actually gotten there on time — all good stuff! (He may not have inherited my lack-of-punctuality gene after all.) We didn’t have tons of time to chat, but he said that his juries during the day had gone very well and that some nice follow-up had come out of them.
Today Sean called to wish me a happy Mother’s Day, and to tell me that he loves me and that I’ve done a good job as a mother — a call that I missed but have preserved on the answering machine, along with the one he left at the end of January when he called home to sing “Happy Birthday” to Alex in, as he said, all four of the major operatic languages: English, German, French, and Italian. We just haven’t had the heart to erase that message, and I suspect that the one to me will remain for quite a while, too. It meant a lot.
And last night we made our plans to move Sean out of Chadbourne on Friday morning. That day once seemed far off, then close, then far off again, and now close — although probably not for him, as he has tech week for the show that he’s in along with finals, but at least he doesn’t have classes on top of it. The biggest things will be getting the piano out (I vowed that I would not participate in that this time!) and the carpeting, which Alex so perfectly cut to size on that August day when we moved Sean in. Alex plans to fly back from his out-of-state job — on the red-eye if he has to — to be there.
He plans to lop a bit of the carpeting off on each end, yank it out of the room, and then we’ll give it a thorough steam cleaning this summer in hopes that it will fit (well enough) into Sean’s room next year. Unlike virtually everyone he knows, Sean will stay in the res halls again — Barnard this time. I lived there in the early ’80s; how strange to think that he’ll have the room that’s just about directly underneath the one that I stayed in. Small world, but good stuff.
Today Sean called to wish me a happy Mother’s Day, and to tell me that he loves me and that I’ve done a good job as a mother — a call that I missed but have preserved on the answering machine, along with the one he left at the end of January when he called home to sing “Happy Birthday” to Alex in, as he said, all four of the major operatic languages: English, German, French, and Italian. We just haven’t had the heart to erase that message, and I suspect that the one to me will remain for quite a while, too. It meant a lot.
And last night we made our plans to move Sean out of Chadbourne on Friday morning. That day once seemed far off, then close, then far off again, and now close — although probably not for him, as he has tech week for the show that he’s in along with finals, but at least he doesn’t have classes on top of it. The biggest things will be getting the piano out (I vowed that I would not participate in that this time!) and the carpeting, which Alex so perfectly cut to size on that August day when we moved Sean in. Alex plans to fly back from his out-of-state job — on the red-eye if he has to — to be there.
He plans to lop a bit of the carpeting off on each end, yank it out of the room, and then we’ll give it a thorough steam cleaning this summer in hopes that it will fit (well enough) into Sean’s room next year. Unlike virtually everyone he knows, Sean will stay in the res halls again — Barnard this time. I lived there in the early ’80s; how strange to think that he’ll have the room that’s just about directly underneath the one that I stayed in. Small world, but good stuff.
