Inch One: Sam

I have written about my son Sam off and on over the almost 17 years I have been blogging. (Yes, 17 years as of March 17! Frigging unbelievable for lots of reasons, starting with my health.) The younger of my two sons, Sam has provided me with a plethora of challenges and laughter and stress and joyous moments over the years. I know, I know. All children provide parents with those same things; Sam maybe just doubled down on challenges at times. 

And, in all fairness, if you were asking Sam, he no doubt would say the same thing of me as his mother: "Yeah, yeah, Mom has provided me with a plethora of challenges and laughter and stress and joyous moments over the years." And then laugh and go on his merry way.

So why Sam now? Because a week ago he and I had one of the best conversations we have had in years. 

Years.

The phone call was set in motion when I texted him the above photo, asking him if he remembered that mug. Sam bought that for me decades ago, when he was a kindergartner or first grader and attending the Santa Store for students at his elementary school. I still have the mug and have been using it regularly as of late. In my text, I touched base with him; I last talked with him on Christmas and knew he had changed jobs since seeing him last July. I was curious how he was doing and how his partner Georgia was doing. 

Sam replied later that night: "Great mug," adding he would call the next day. And he did.

Sam started immediately on the biggest change in his life: he had just the week before quit his most recent job (as a mail handler with the USPS). Why? Sam didn't mince words: "It was the worst job I have ever held. Just horrid." He was working long, middle-of-the-night hours (biking to work at 3:00 a.m. when he started); his body clock was a mess; he rarely (very rarely) had days off or evenings free; he could not see his friends or spend time with Georgia or go biking or cook for the sheer enjoyment of cooking. He hadn't been able to see his brother in a long time. In short, Sam was disconnected from everything and everyone that gave his life meaning. So, with Georgia's enthusiastic blessings, he quit. (Note: Sam and Georgia live frugal lives, intentionally, so his quitting would not sink their lives. He can take some time, catch his breath, then move on into another job.)

And even though he had just quit, I could hear the change in his voice and his laugh. His body clock had already reset. He was already seeing friends. Life was immediately better.

Sam, Sam, Sam.

From the beginning, my sons (and their families) have been threaded throughout this blog. Even with the 2450 miles between us, I hold them in my hearts and am often reminded of them: a comment, a shrug, a book, a mug. In an early post about Sam's upcoming birthday, I noted how he had once had a perfect day, ending with his scooping up a penny on the ground and exclaiming "Is this my lucky day or what?" 

When we talked last week, I heard that same joyful, lighthearted exhilaration in Sam's voice as that long ago little boy spying a penny. We finished the call and I sat there with tears in my eyes: happy for my boy and his decision to quit an unhealthy situation. 

In that long ago post, I wished Sam a life full of lucky days, and, more importantly, that he never lose the ability to recognize them when they came along. I'd say that wish came true. 

This Year's Gardens: Part 7

 

The first two tomatoes. Yes! Or, as I still use this great phrase from my years with the Cubans: al fin! 

These are from one of the two Husky Red cherries I planted. An Early Girl nearby is trying to get her act together, but these two just sailed across the finish line. I found them about 30 minutes ago when I was deadheading some marigolds and looked past the border into the heart of the tomato plant. 

Now it feels like summer. 

***And on an absolutely irrelevant (to gardening, that is) note,  "Deadheading" has a whole different meaning for those of us who are Grateful Dead/Dead fans (when Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the remaining original members agreed to not use the "Grateful" again in the band's name). Just saying. The Dead just finished off one final tour—the Final Tour—of the US to end a stunning decades-long history. Their last concerts were in San Francisco, the city where it all started, last weekend. My dear son Ben caught the Final Tour concert in Philadelphia this June; he still has the ticket in his wallet from 2003 (when he was still in high school) from the very first time he saw them. Now that's a Dead fan. 

Ghostbusters, Ben, and Me

 Yes, I know. The correct grammatical construction of the title is "Ghostbusters, Ben, and I," but I'm following E. B. White's sage advice that sometimes it's better to go with your ear and not the rule. Thank you, Andy.

The original Ghostbusters movie came out in 1984. My oldest son Ben was born in late 1985. Thanks to a bootleg video copy made by my brother Mike sometime in 1987 (I think), Ben and I watched Ghostbusters not just once or twice, but easily two dozen times or more.

Probably more. We knew every character, we knew all the scenes, we knew it all.

How could you not love this this scene?  

So when Ghostbusters II came out in 1989, Ben and I were at the movie theatre in Sacramento on the opening day, our excitement of seeing it the very day it opened outweighing the hour drive to get there.

Ben was not disappointed. Neither was I:

Time moves on. Little boys grow up, interests change, and the once beloved movie or book or game ends up tucked away in fond memories.

Then in late 2021, Ghostbusters: Afterlife came out, reuniting much of the original cast. When I heard about it, my first reaction was, "But Harold Ramis died. They can't do Ghostbusters without Egon."

I didn't go see the movie. (Confession: I have seen no movies at a theatre in these Covid times but neither did I rent it to watch online.) I doubt Ben saw it in any format. I do remember sending him a quick email noting the new movie. After that, I put it out of my mind until I caught an interview with Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson, the remaining Ghostbusters, in which they talked about making the movie without Harold Ramis, but also with Harold Ramis, being careful not to give out any spoilers.

Then I saw an interview with director Jason Reitman (whose father directed the original two movies) in which he explained how they went about bringing Harold Ramis or, rather, his character, Egon Spengler, back using a combination of a body double and CGI. (Brilliantly, I might add.)

What is YouTube for if not to see bits of movies? Including the ending of Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

Without recapping a movie I have not watched, let me just say that the movie's final battle brings back Gozer (from the original movie) against the remaining Ghostbusters. When all seems lost, Egon's granddaughter Phoebe, who has been discovering and learning the lore and knowledge that her late grandfather had stored about the earlier battles, steps into the battle with Egon's proton pack on her back. She loses ground against Gozer until a translucent adult hand appears to help steady her aim. It is the ghost of her grandfather, who returns her amazed look with a gentle smile and helps her battle on until his former companions can rejoin the fight. 

The part I have watched repeatedly is the final scene, after Gozer has been defeated, between Egon's ghost and his estranged daughter, Callie. Callie's version of family was that her father had abandoned his family and her heedlessly. Egon looks at her longingly. Will she forgive him for seemingly running out on her so many years ago? Will she understand that he left his family behind in order to protect them?

Spoiler alert: yes, she will and she does. She goes into his arms. and they embrace. His hope fulfilled, Egon's dissolves into the night sky. 

Ben and I are not estranged. We live far apart, true, but we stay connected. So I don't have that element. But if wishes come true, when I transition from life to death, I would love one last opportunity to meet up with Ben, my Ghostbuster pal of yore, and have that one last loving embrace.

And then Ben, not unlike Peter Venkman in the end of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, can go have some hot cocoa. With or without marshmallows. 

Small Moment

We have entered that time of the baseball season that I love the best: playoffs and World Series time. Realize that even this time of year, we don't haul out the television, or stream the game online, or even (for the most part) listen on the radio. Sometimes I'll check the score of a game while it is happening, then turn to other things. It is the idea of the series, that they are happening now, that fuels my passion.

My beloved Chicago Cubs are in the League Championship Series once again after a 5th game win against the Washington Nationals last Thursday. Warren was livestreaming the game part of the evening and I happened to be listening during the 5th inning, which had to qualify as one of the wildest innings in playoff history. I was yelling incoherently—I think some variation of "YES! YES! YES!"—and said to Warren after the side was retired, "I can't listen anymore." So I did not know until the next morning that the Cubs held on and won, propelling them into the LCS.

Last year close to this time the Cubs were bearing down on returning to the World Series for the first time since 1945. Warren and I were out somewhere in Columbus that evening when a text came in from my son Ben:

       Not sure if you are still up but the cubs are 3 outs from                 going [to] the world series

I don't remember whether we were listening to the game when Ben texted but we quickly found it on the radio. That may have been the evening we got back home before the game ended and I told Warren to drive a few blocks more so I could hear them finish. The Cubs won and my phone lit up again:

       They did it! We love you

Indeed the Cubs did it.

I have saved those texts, locking them on my phone and in my heart. They were quick hugs from Benjamin—baseball, love, World Series, the Cubs—across the miles. October once again, I pull them up and reread them:

       They did it! We love you

I love you too, Ben. Here's to this baseball time of year.

Inch One Hundred Thirty-Eight: Golden Moment

It has been a long week already and is not even over yet. There was a family medical emergency earlier this week that is resolved for now. I have had an atypically strong reaction to this week's chemo despite it being the very same chemo I have had for weeks now, so I have been dealing with fevers and cold chills and other miscellaneous reactions (but no nausea) since Tuesday. Earlier today I spoke at a Magistrate's conference in the late morning, leaving from and returning to Court, resulting in a late lunch. And today was a longer day than usual because we just started a new Victims Awareness group, which means working with the kids until 5:30 and then staying on to debrief until almost 6:00.

To say that I was done in by the time I got back up to my office after debriefing would be an understatement. I was way past done in. Done in was in the rearview mirror.

Before shutting down my office computer for the night, I checked email. Court email was routine. But in my personal email was a gift, pure and simple:

Hey Mom,
Just writing you to say we love you. We are as busy as ever as working lots and hanging out with Ramona and having a good time.

My son Benjamin could not have timed his email any better if he tried. It was just what I needed, a little shot of love that was totally unexpected, a little pick-me-up at the end of a long, hard day, a little moment shot through with gold.

My Norman Rockwell Moment

"Breaking Home Ties," by Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell is kind of a hard one to place in terms of his role in our cultural history. Was he an artist? An illustrator? Did he paint America as it was? Or America as it never existed? I enjoy his work because it reminds me of my childhood. I didn't live in a Norman Rockwell world; no one I knew did. But my parents subscribed to The Saturday Evening Post and I saw a lot of his cover works as I was growing up. 

"Breaking Home Ties" is one I have seen often over the years. It is deceptively simple: a father and son waiting for the train. The son is off to college, undoubtedly a freshman. His father is waiting with him, holding both his son's and his own hats, one shiny new, the other worn and stained. The son is looking expectantly to the future, the father to the past.

Tuesday was my Norman Rockwell moment.

My son Sam came back to Ohio in mid-June, looking to lay over briefly, earn some money at odd jobs, and then go on farther east to backpack and hike. He spent four weeks here, managed by hard labor to make a tidy sum of money, all the time finalizing his plans for the next stage of the summer. He found a ride to share to North Carolina, his next destination, with a college student from the Cincinnati area.

It was time to move on.

Tuesday morning I drove Sam to Covington, Kentucky to rendezvous with the driver. We reached the agreed upon meeting point first by, oh, ten minutes or so. Sam pulled out his carefully loaded backpack and propped it against the car. He pulled out his shoes and a bag of food I'd packed for him.

Then Sam plopped down on a parking curb and waited expectantly, looking for all the world like Rockwell's young man sitting on the running board waiting for the train. And me? I'd have been holding both our hats and turning them over and over in my hands if we'd had hats. 

Sam was clearly ready for the next leg of his summer adventures. And me? I was saying goodbye yet again to one of my children.

When the driver arrived, Sam jumped up. We talked for a few seconds, then Sam easily hoisted his backpack on and gave me a hug. "Have fun," I said. "Travel safe," I told them both.

I headed back home. It was mid-morning and already hot; my car windows were down. I found an oldies station in Cincinnati and cranked it up high, singing along when I knew the words. And bit by bit, mile by mile, Sam's train rolled on into the future.

Pennies Under The Rug

Last night I had a short, intense exchange with Sam on the issue of finances. Mine, not his. The dialogue was prompted by my asking him his financial status, as Sam's dad had just asked me to contribute more to Sam's monthly expenses. Sam immediately asked why we were even having that discussion without his involvement.

Good point, Sam. And thank you for making it.

Emails about money from my ex-spouse, no matter how well meant, always cause my stress level to jump way into the red. Because of the long and often difficult history between us, including major struggles on financial issues, I cannot read any inquiry from him as neutral. This one was no exception.

To reply to his email required much agonizing over words. As I labored through a draft, I cried out "I can hear Doug [my brilliant therapist of yore] talking to me!" Warren, who was providing moral support and a listening ear, asked me what Doug was saying.

"Stop thinking that telling your story means it is heard."

Doug was right. My long, labored explanation added nothing to the discussion and only made me feel worse. I trimmed my reply considerably, reined in my feelings, wrote that I was already doing all I could do, and would stretch more when I could. Then I hit "send."

But not before Sam and I had our quick exchange. And not before I assured Sam that he was not the source of financial stress in my life.

I grew up in a hardworking, blue collar family where my parents made it clear from grade school on that they would support and provide for my brothers and me until we graduated from high school. After that, we were on our own and either had to join the military, get a job, or go to college. If you chose college, good for you, but it was on your own dime. After my parents drove me to Chicago in the fall of 1974 and unloaded my suitcases, their obligation ended. It was my scholarships, my loans, and my meager savings that got me through that first year and the years to follow.

Having gone to college on the sink or swim financial plan, I have always felt strongly about helping my children through college. What I hadn't planned on was Life, in the form of a major illness and an extreme and permanent reduction in income, messing up my plans.

I struggled my way through the responses and the guilt last night. I did not want to turn my back on Sam, and while I "knew" I wasn't doing that, I didn't accept that I was not. I "know" I am doing what I can to help him achieve his education. Is it all I want or hoped it would be? No. But I have to accept that my means are far more limited than in "the old days" and I am doing what I can. I can only shave pennies so thin, no matter what my desires for my children. And at this point, all my pennies are pretty thinly shaved. (Confession: I did just start a "getting away" account, but with my opening deposit being a whopping $96.33 and a third of that being spare change and another half being rebates and coupon savings, I don't think I am being selfish at the expense of a college education.)

For me, the big issue is changing my mindset that spending money equals love and that the only way I can prove myself as a good and loving parent is to overextend myself financially. As I told Warren, I could move this amount from here to there (because I also pay some other bills for Sam), but I was really just playing a shell game. Spread the dollars as I might over my budget, there are still only a given number of dollars.  Like resolving to buy the gift I can afford versus the splashier, pricier gift I can't, I have to work through my feelings and accept that it is okay to say "I can't do that amount, but I can do this amount."

I have to accept that about myself: that I am doing all I can. I have to give myself permission that "all I can" is a loving response.  

My friend Arlene recently shared her memory of her mother helping her with her college education: How well I remember my mother's jar of dimes. I still have tears when I think of the morning she rolled back the worn rug and removed enough nickels, dimes, and pennies to pay my first quarter tuition at OSU.

It is a beautiful story and one I thought about last night as I struggled with my desire and my inability to provide everything I would like for my children.

Sam will be home in four weeks for a visit and a brief respite from school. He'll have a chance to talk; I'll have a chance to listen. We are both looking forward to cooking together and recently talked about some of the dishes we want to try. And perhaps we'll have a chance to roll back the rug and find treasures underneath.

A Plethora of Pantoums: French Lullabies

The pantoum below was written based upon hearing my sister-in-law singing French lullabies in the early morning as she went about some kitchen tasks.  For the record, she was not weeping, but having just said goodbye to both of my sons, I easily imagined a scene where a mother would combine gentle weeping and soft singing as she thought back over the early years of childhood.

*********

French Lullabies

The French lullabies that now are not needed?
They hang in the air yet.
She gently weeps as she puts things to right
in the kitchen.

They hang in the air yet,
Clinging to the curtains.
In the kitchen,
Little tears

Clinging to the curtains.
The French lullabies,
Little tears,
You could brush away unnoticed if anyone came in.

The French lullabies
She used to sing to him,
You could brush away unnoticed if anyone came in.
In the quiet morning, her clear notes rise up the stairs.

She used to sing to him.
The baby is gone.
In the quiet morning, her clear notes rise up the stairs.
The little boy is gone.

The baby is gone.
He does not need crooned to now.
The little boy is gone.
She croons the French lullabies.

He does not need crooned to now.
As she wipes the kitchen counter,
She croons the French lullabies
Gently weeping.

As she wipes the kitchen counter
She gently weeps as she puts things to rights,
Gently weeping
The French lullabies that now are not needed.

Winter Night, Winter Memories

The first Friday of each month, our downtown stores stay open late and people come out to eat and shop. The Symphony office, located downtown next to the movie theatre, stays open for the event. So last night found both of us headed out for First Friday.

I had a book to return to the library, a block and a half down the hill from the Symphony office, so I walked there in the gathering evening before coming back to help Warren out.

It was snowing lightly when I walked down, and snowing a little harder when I headed back up towards downtown. As I walked up the small hill, I could see the lights of downtown burning bright against the evening sky.

I was hit with a strong, cold wave of memory as those lights came into view. Not strong enough to knock me off my feet, but it jarred me all the same.

When I first came back to Delaware 20 years ago, I worked as an associate in a very small law firm in the heart of downtown. For reasons sometimes too twisted to decipher even decades later, I rarely was allowed use of the family car. Fortunately, we only lived six blocks from the office, and I loved to walk.

I last worked at that office 11 years ago, but I still remember, strongly, emerging from the building on an early winter evening onto the very same street down which I was now gazing. Street and window lights would be on, often it was cold, sometimes there'd be snow falling. I would walk home quickly, bundled against the chill, eager to reach the shelter of the house.

My thoughts would often be on the day I'd just left behind - the clients, the paperwork. As I walked, my mind would transition to whatever awaited me at home. In all likelihood, I had talked with my then husband and already taken an initial reading of his mood over the phone. I was too often tense over what probably awaited me when I got home, but that often propelled me to walk faster, not slower, to get the homecoming over with and to be there for my sons.

I missed my boys. I wanted to be home with them more, but as the sole wage earner, that was not an option. Despite the troubled household, despite the tension and pain that laced so many of the days, I gathered strength from the looks of their faces when I walked through the door each evening. I knew that for the next few hours at least, I could focus on Ben and Sam, the stories of their days, the bedtime books, the blissful look on their sleeping faces.

Last night's walk in the early evening brought back the feelings - the anxiety, the sadness - I used to wear almost every day but most especially as I walked back home each night. But it also brought back the bright moments: the joys in my children's faces, the warmth of a small boy snuggling up against me to hear a story or to tell one himself.

The poet Rilke, commenting on his decision to leave therapy, said "if my devils are to leave me, I'm afraid my angels would take flight as well." That sentiment applies to the past as well. The past is what it is and I cannot dwell too long in its deeper depths. But I can reach into the gloom and pull out the brightest moments, and those would be the times with Ben and Sam.

When I got back to the office, awash in these memories, I looked over at the bookshelf inside the front door. On it are rhythm instruments and a collection of children's books with rhymes and music and art themes. Most of the books are loaners from my collection. They are books that were interwoven through Ben and Sam's childhoods: Color Dance, Mouse Paint, Traveling to Tondo, Brother Billy Bronto's Bygone Blues Band (a picture book that magically features both dinosaurs and a train wreck, which automatically made it a hit with Sam when we first read it).

Looking at the titles, I could once more feel the weight of my boys on my lap, once again hear their quiet, rapt breathing while we read. Surely it is a prerogative of every parent of grown children to hold close such memories, especially when their warmth and glow are inextinguishable against the dark winter night.

Saying Goodbye

I have been saying "goodbye" to my boys since they were little.

"Goodbye, I'll see you after school."

"Goodbye, have fun at camp."

"Goodbye, let me know your plane got in."

Being a parent and watching your children grow up is one long series of goodbyes. Everything we do to guide them to adulthood is aimed at one day saying "goodbye" as they step into their new lives.

So why does it still hurt so much when that day comes?

When we were out in Montana for Ben and Alise's wedding, I had to say goodbye to both of my boys at the same time. The wedding weekend was over and Warren and I were leaving early the next morning to start our trip back to Ohio.

Ben now lives in Montana with Alise and I would be saying goodbye to both of them for who knows how long. And Sam was staying on in Montana for a week with Ben and Alise before heading further west to Oregon, where he will start at Portland State next month.

I've said goodbye to each of my sons many times and under many circumstances. But this time was different. Here was Ben, stepping into married life. Here was Sam, making some new and important life choices.

Our last day in Helena, the day after the wedding about which I hope to write soon, most of us went to Lake Helena for an afternoon of boating. Alise's father, Joe, took my parents and the boys' father and his fiancé out first, while the rest of us stayed on shore and talked about books and other things. Then Alise, Ben, Sam, Warren, and I joined Joe and Jenna, Alise's younger sister, and we went out on the lake for a couple of hours - my farewell tour, as it were, with the boys.

It was wonderful. I got to see Ben and Alise in a setting familiar to them, unfamiliar to me. I got to watch Sam, who back on shore said he was ready to experience life directly instead of through his computer, try out a new experience. We all got the chance to laugh and talk and joke and relax.

After we came in, we caravanned back to Joe and Mona's house for one last meal of wedding reception leftovers. We ate, we talked, I watched my boys.

And then it was time to say goodbye.

Sam was first. Sam, with whom we had had a most excellent time (well, if you didn't count the last ten minutes when we arrived in Helena and were looking for Ben and Alise's apartment) driving cross-county. Sam, who'd stood on the rail at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the North Dakota Badlands, gazing endlessly, saying "I want to come back here and hike." Sam, who'd just yesterday stood by his brother while Ben recited his vows and then broke into a loud cheer when the wedding was concluded.

That Sam.

Sam gave me a hearty hug. "Okay, mom, goodbye until whenever! I love you!"

Oh, I love you so, Sam.

A goodbye hug from Ben. A long, hard hug from my firstborn, who I have watched over from afar for so long. "Thanks for coming out to the wedding, mom. I'm really glad you did. I love you."

My dear Ben, how I love you!

Then goodbyes and hugs to everyone else - Alise, no longer my almost-daughter-in-law, Jenna, their parents, Joe and Mona.

I told Warren I was ready to leave. And although there was a large lump in my throat, I was in pretty good shape as we left the room.

Joe and Mona live in a tri-level house, and to leave the living room where we were, you walk down a short flight of stairs to the front door. As we were walking down, I glanced back and saw Ben standing at the top of the stairs, watching us leave.

He had followed us out.

That killed me.

I have seen Ben only three times in the last five years. I don't know when I will see him again. He's almost 25, he's married, he and Alise are forging their own paths. Yet there was my boy - all grown to manhood - watching his mother leave.

Maybe it occurred to Ben that he wouldn't see me for some time. Maybe he just wanted to see his mom for a minute more. Maybe it was just coincidence (but I don't think so).

I held my tears until I was in the car, and then they came. I cried much of the way to the hotel. Not torrents of tears - more like a spring that fills a basin slowly until it wells over. I cried the same, slow way through the night while Warren held me close.

The next morning we left Montana early, driving into a golden sunrise. We exclaimed over the trip so far, we talked about the wedding and the reception. We told each other "I love you."

The road was brilliant before us. Adventures lay ahead.

And I silently bid my boys goodbye one more time.

Sam Has a Birthday This Weekend

I wrote about my son Sam when he moved to Oregon in early April. Sam is still out there, looking for work, living in a house with four other young adults, including his brother Ben. He turns 19 at the end of this month. This will be the first time ever that I have not spent at least a portion of his birthday with him, so this post is in lieu of baking Sam a birthday cake.

Sam has made for some great parenting moments over the years. There was the time when Sam was young - five, perhaps, maybe six - and he and Keegan, a year younger, decided it would be a good idea to throw rocks at Mrs. Roof's storm door. Mrs. Roof, who lived down the alley, was elderly and largely housebound. They tossed rocks until they broke the glass, then fled to their respective homes. I was not home when Mrs. Roof called to complain, but the story related by Sam's father was that when asked if he knew anything about Mrs. Roof's door, Sam denied any knowledge, then suddenly shouted, "I did it! I didn't know what I was doing! I'm crazy! I'm insane!"

Then there was the time that we took a lengthy car vacation from Ohio to California and back again, visiting a number of national parks along the way. The last stop, before barreling back to Ohio, was the Grand Canyon. Sam, who was eight that summer, marched up to the rim, looked at the spectacular vista spread out before him, then promptly turned around and sat down with his back to it. When I asked him why, Sam looked up - angry, homesick, on the verge of tears - and shouted "All you've done on this vacation is show me rocks!"

He refused to look at the Grand Canyon again.

There have been other moments as well: watching him tune his cello by harmonics when he was only six, because he could hear the tones so well, and then watching him put the cello down and refuse to play it ever again at age 11 rather than bend for the strings teacher who would not bend for him. There was the eighth grade science fair where he pulled off a Superior solely on the strength of his knowledge and ability to talk through the topic, having extrapolated data based on only one experiment. There was the one and only prom he attended, as the sophomore date of an older girlfriend, for which he groused and grumbled his way into a tux, posed for the mandatory pictures, then came home hours later exclaiming "That was a blast!"

My friend Katrina recently wrote me: "How is it that when you write, you make even problems with your kids sound poetic?"

How indeed? Probably because I exercise poetic license and exorcise the worst moments. There have been many; Sam and I have had more than our share of just plain awful scenes.

I am fortunate in that I was given a gift by Sam that changed the course of our relationship and kept it from unraveling entirely. Sam at sixteen was in court-ordered counseling; I participated in a family group independent of Sam. Sam's counselors decided he would benefit from a joint session. At it, one counselor asked Sam which parent he thought he was most like? Without missing a beat, Sam said "my mom." The counselor who had worked separately with both of us immediately said "I agree."

I had been sitting there expecting to hear "my dad," as every battle I struggled through with Sam reminded me of his father, who I had divorced after many long and difficult years together. Every time Sam and I crossed swords, I would see his father in him and my defenses would go up.

And here was Sam saying, so easily, "my mom."

Sam seeing what I couldn't - the similarities between us - made me take a long look at Sam, at me, and at our relationship. Life did not become idyllic, but our relationship changed permanently for the better. I started to see Sam for who he really was, rather than see in him motives and attitudes that belonged to someone else, and I learned to trust him and his emotions in ways I could not have before that moment.

We wouldn't have come as far as we have - either of us - without his revelation.

When Sam was a little boy, he once had a perfect day. Sam had kindergarten in the morning, and something exciting happened there - maybe an assembly or maybe just a great kindergarten day. Afterwards, his father took him to the grocery store when they were giving away lots of food samples, which Sam sampled liberally. Walking back to the car, Sam spied a penny on the pavement and scooped it up, exclaiming, "man, is this my lucky day or what?"

My birthday wish for my little boy all grown up is that he have a life full of lucky days - and that he never lose the ability to recognize them when they come along.