First day of school after a long holiday break…first morning, first rising, and first moments into the break of another stretch of school. How would one expect to greet such a moment? With ecstaticism, joy, and elation? Or mope, drudgery, and gripe? Or instead how about a heart of hope of good things to come?
Sadly, I lacked the heart of hope as I awoke to greet my son with a barrage of inquiries and annoyances…of what he forgot to do or neglected to do.
Yet, I forgot about the great weekend we enjoyed and that Friday, New Years Eve night. You see, we punctuated our year with time at Avamere Retirement Home. The boys had the best performance…ever, over the coarse of the 6 years we’ve served. Despite Margaret taking her teeth in and out of her mouth and twirling it in the palm of her hand next to him, Jeremy remained laser-focused on the score of the music and continued “without skipping a beat.” The audience was captivated, engaged, and delighted by these young boys who filled the space with Gershwin, Beethoven, Chopin, Pachabel, Bach, and others. I was impressed.
But the Mom’s morning greeting reflected the mood of the Monday with drudgery and pessimism.
“Did you get your chore done last night?” “And what about vacuuming the foyer?” “Jeremy, I told you to pick up your socks…didn’t I?”
Why didn’t I think about saying this instead?...
“Good Morning Jeremy. We sure did have a great Christmas break. I hope you have a great start to your day. When you get back from school, let’s talk about some of the chores we can do…and maybe together. By the way, I’ll miss you today because I sure did enjoy you at home these last weeks.”
There! That would have been a better start. But it didn’t happen that way. So conviction set in and a mom had to do what a mom had to do.
I packed up the youngers and headed back to the middle school. Checked in at the front desk and headed for the lunchroom. Yet even within the sea of teens, I spotted him right away, smack in the center of the lunchroom. I shuffled over, hesitating for fear of embarrassing this young teen. You know how teens are and especially with their parents. Dare they be seen with us?
But the school secretary encouraged me that mothers were suppose to embarrass their teens and I decided that temporary embarrassment would be trumped by a humble apology.
“What are you doing here?” with a surprise inflection and startled look in his wide eyes. Not accusatory, just surprised.
I bent close to his ear and held his shoulders firmly yet lovingly and whispered so no one would hear, “I’m sorry about this morning. Will you forgive me?”
“Forgive you…uh, for what? But yeah, I guess.” Still startled and wondering.
I handed him a little baggy…inside, two pieces of bite-sized Milky Ways and one fun-sized Million Dollar Bar, left over from Halloween…convinced that sometimes even sugar and sweet can minister to a growing teen.
But also included in the baggy, a little note from mom.
Still holding his shoulders firmly yet lovingly, I gave him a squeeze, kissed his temple, turned and walked away with three littles following close behind.
When he arrived home, I apologized again. Yet again…
“I’m sorry that I embarrassed you by coming to your school and dropping off treats. I guess I could’ve waited for you to come home. Sorry ‘bout that.”
“Yeah, ok. I forgive you.” And that was it.
Five minutes later. “Mom, you actually didn’t embarrass me. I, uh…(pause, pause) kind of liked it.”
“You did?” I squeeked, surprised beyond the moon. “But what about Ryan. When I said hello to Ryan, (his friend sitting next to him) he seemed embarrassed that I said hello.”
“Yeah, he was, but I wasn’t. I actually wanted to…err…brag.” “Yeah, brag. I wanted to say, hey, look everybody, my mom’s here! Because I was happy to see you!“
He was happy to see me.
My teenager was happy to see me.
By the way, here’s the note I left in the baggy:
To my son, the one whom I loved the longest, the one whose
birth I anticipated with the greatest of heart and who first
gave me the title of mother,
‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’ Jeremiah 31:3
I love you dearly, my son. Love, Mom
