Wednesday, April 10, 2013

I is for Inconsolable (by Mary Allison Tierney)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.


Photography by Mary Allison Tierney


I have him a quick hug. I couldn’t say a word or look at his face. After he pedaled down our driveway, I stepped into his abandoned basement dude lair/ recording studio and consoled myself by immediately attacking his room.  His mattress, which lay on the floor, was surrounded by balled up dirty socks, just stepped out of boxers, a wet towel, dirty coffee cups, plates, a spoon, a Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels bag, and all the boy-in-a-band detritus: guitar strings, picks, cords, loose change, a broken pencil, scraps of paper, and a receipt for a burrito.

His backpack and guitar in the baby blue gig bag sat next to the bed. I went to move the back pack and could hardly lift the thing.  It stood on the ground as high as my hip and I dragged it into the guest room.  I distracted myself by purging his room. He had attached most of the his pictures and posters with duct tape, so lots of plaster came off with them. After a full day of pulling it all off, vacuuming and moving out the furniture, his brother and I went to the paint store, excited to choose the color of his new room.

I was to fly up to Seattle in two weeks. He was pedaling 900 miles to college and was wildly unprepared for this, but there was no stopping him. I got Bike Tour updates almost daily, where he camped, what he was seeing. He was with a friend and sometimes my update came through her parents via ATM debits. I worked very slowly, patching and repainting each wall.

A few days before I was set to fly up to Seattle, I learn what was making the backpack so damned heavy: his beloved chrome studded black leather biker jacket, the leather hiking boots he wore on his NOLS Alaska trip, black jean cutoffs patched with black leather, a half dozen black metal band shirts, several missing sleeves, all reeking of BO as they had been pulled from the floor or hamper and stuffed into the backpack, Cannibis Corpse sweatpants, and seven mismatched wool socks (none clean) and four pair of boxers. And of course his laptop and charger, all the essentials to start college.

Appropriately, it was raining in Seattle, raining as we drove to Olympia, and raining the next morning. Having survived his Bike Tour, he insisted on riding his bike from the hotel to his dorm, but didn’t want me to come inside.  I insisted.  It resembled a luxury prison suite. I’ll never know if another mother was more successful making it cozier. I never saw that room again.  Or him, until Thanksgiving.

He stood me up for dinner, texting to say he ate with people he’d met, which was great, but I was disgusted. No teary hug goodbye, or final dinner and I never met his roommate. It was pouring rain the next morning as I drove to the airport and the radio was all Pearl Jam.  The Pacific Northwest feeds on itself.  Even though I was pissed at him, I was very much missing my son. I don’t know why now all of a sudden I expected some smarmy John Hughes scripted take-the-kid-to-college scenario, but I felt gypped.  Parenting sucks.

Mary Allison has been published in The Sun magazine and the Marin Independent Journal and is looking forward with dread and gusto to starting her fourth NaNoWriMo novel in November. Mary Allison is a novice surfer, a diligent trail runner, and a 4-time Dipsea Race finisher. She tries really hard to read one long New Yorker article each week, not just the cartoons.

13 comments:

  1. Each have their own path and can't rely on john hughes wrath haha

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  2. *hugging the kiddoes close* No, they won't ever grow old. *head shaking* It's a lie, a vicious, ugly lie.

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  3. Wow, what a self absorbed slob. The mother in me just wants to slap the sh out of him. Then again, letting him do whatever he wants in his room, that I feel sure he didn't pay for wouldn't happen in my house. It's alright to be kids, it's not alright to thumb your nose at your family. Who's paying for the trip, the bike, college. Man, reading this made my blood pressure jump.
    A-Z

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    1. Sandy,
      Thank you. You are very accurate with the 'self absorbed slob' comment about my child. His world is very small and the focus is him. This is adolescent male brain chemistry unfortunately. He paid for the bike trip, and earned an academic scholarship that covered a large chunk of tuition. As for the room, well… he's a woodsman.

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  4. Wow, I would be mighty pissed if my son stood me up like that. I get that they have to pull away and all but I'd let him know how unacceptable that was. Nobody deserves to be taken for granted like that.

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  5. Thank you, Bridget. Yes. His pulling away lacked a certain amount of grace. He and I have had many talks, some more productive than others, about such moments. It was completely unacceptable. Believe me, he knows. (Young) men don't really have the tools to respectfully draw boundaries. It takes many many many reminders from the women in their lives and it is exhausting and emotional. I was pissed, for sure. In a few months his younger brother gets launched. Hopefully he was paying attention!

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  6. Parenting is definitely a roller coaster ride!

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  7. geesh, and I'm feeling whimpy about mine heading to high school

    on the bright side, you have helped him be confident and secure going off on his own path, and hopefully he didn't mean to take you for granted, and his action was proof that he trusts you've got his back

    here's to the next one being more sensitive :-)

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    1. Diana thank you that is very comforting to hear. Here's to more sensitivity! Cheers!

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