Saturday, June 1, 2013

So I Have A Son Who's 18 Now



Our oldest son turned 18 a month ago, and I still walk around telling myself, "I have a kid who's 18." It's not something you get used to easily.

I was listening to the radio while re-stocking the refrigerator for the second time in four days, because I live with one other teenager, an 11 year old, and two men, when a segment came on about women and dreams. The mental health expert being interviewed reported that women dream more vividly than men because we deal with more emotions. "Dreams," she explained, "are when we process the emotions of our day."

There's no magisoso to what we see when we close our eyes to sleep, it's just how we humans rehash the events of our life. (that would be why all the taco shells made out of bacon make at least one appearance per night)

This theory explains exactly so much about just how my brain is processing the emotion of having an 18-year-old son.

I had a dream this week where my bicepped son sat at the kitchen table, legs kicked open, downing white milk out of a quart container, streaming dribbles of it pouring down both sides of his mouth and onto to his unclothed chest.

"Stop!" I ordered while running toward him. "You're allergic to milk. You can't drink that!"

He kept glugging, not missing a drop, while he looked me straight on in the eye. Swallowing the last of it, he said in a bored tone, "Says you."

Wiping his dairy-drenched mouth with his hand, he stood up from the kitchen chair and went from being shirtless to suddenly head to cleated toe dressed in a red and white football uniform, huge shoulder pads sticking out of the jersey sleeves. He slammed a black helmet on his head with one hand and began to click across our wooden kitchen floor with his spikes on. I watched him walk out the back door and join up with a group of other red and white football jersey wearing 18 year olds.

"You can't play football!," I called out after him telepathically, because it's a dream, and I never talk in my dreams, it's just lightning bolts of thoughts. "Remember?," I brain messaged him, "We decided you'd swim instead, right?"

No brain waves of answer back.

I knew I couldn't pull him out of the marching ranks so I decided to make my next non verbal shout into the dream world a practical one. "When will you be home?," I asked via hopeful raised upwards eyebrows, ::feeling:: the emotions of wanting to bribe him with pork chops.

Clicking the helmet's chin strap, he mentally spit back his answer, "Two days." Kapow -- right between my frontal lobes.

Message received and noted.

Punk didn't even look back.

...processing processing processing...

Picture of an 18-year-old-man that is my son

 It does not compute.

* * *

24 comments:

  1. 18 for me is like a lifetime ago. Yet, if I was to imagine my boys as 18 year olds, it seems like it's rushing up to us.

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    Replies
    1. Didn't we just feel so grown up? He could get married now if he wanted to.

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  2. ha. you are losing control mom...not of him but the circumstances around him...and he will have to be making his own decisions...and living with his own consequences....smiles....it will be alright, i am sure you raised him good..

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    Replies
    1. Brian, have you ever written a post on a dream? I'd love to read it.

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  3. I am fastening my seatbelt for 16 in five weeks...as if somehow the actual day will make it all make sense for me. I keep pretending it just means we switch seats in the car. (Sure that seems simple.) Instead, I imagine I will also be left...processing

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    Replies
    1. I remember that day, and it was TWO YEARS AGO!

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  4. You are one year and several intense emotions ahead of me with the 18 year old, though when I reflect on how often my 17 year old s actually home, I might be semi prepared for him to go off to school. We'll see how soon I start having stress dreams about it. I will look to you for guidance when them time comes.

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  5. This was great. They do start to break away. If it's any consolation our oldest was not much fun to live with his senior year, but has come home this summer after his first year of college -- and it's been wonderful to have him around. He seems to like us again. And speaking of dreams, had the first one last night that I could remember in forever. I even talked to my husband about it this morning. I was in water trying to get to some calamity that I can't remember -- and my 9 yo son was hanging on to one leg and an alligator chomped down on another. What in the heck?

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    Replies
    1. I am the dream whisperer, SMM. My Colombian grandmother taught me. Going to email you BUT I can tell you this: a therapist told me that dreams are about the feelig in them, not the symbols. If I were across from you right now, I'd ask you how you felt: anxious, overwhelmed, tired? And we'd take it from there. Also: you might like this post here: http://funnynotslutty.com/2012/11/memoirs-of-my-america-dream-whisperer/

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  6. I will never be ready for this number!

    Sweet post!

    XOXO
    Anna

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    Replies
    1. I don't think many are.

      Some may be, but I think for the ones I know, I don't think so.

      xo

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  7. this makes me want to cry.

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  8. 18 hit me hard, too. And this fall, he'll be 20. Which really floors me. But the worst was when he accidentally walked out of the bathroom naked after a shower, not realizing I was hope. Something about actually seeing that he was a man freaked me out.

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  9. Love it. And really? You're really the mother of an almost-adult? Wow...

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    Replies
    1. I am, Dusty. As smart and common sense as I am, I never saw it coming.

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  10. You mean if I stack books on their head that doesn't prevent them from growing up (and away)? DANG. Ah mamma, it's amazing, isn't it, that wheel of life just turning and turning...

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    Replies
    1. Strapping band aids to the top of their heads while they sleep doesn't work either. Just pulls their hair out.

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  11. I still can't get over the sight of my strapping 17 year old, dressed to go out as he stood by the window watching for his ride.
    I felt like my time with him was over.

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    Replies
    1. and also remembering how grown up we felt at that age.

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  12. A whopper of a dream. I had a roommate once who had dreams like that -- with BIG HONKING symbols and super-clear messages even thought the imagery was still all heightened and the dream logic and time distortions were present. At least you know you are processing all these emotions. I think it hits the moms harder than the dads, that's seemed to have been the case among friends and family. And when the mom is a sensitive writer type, oy. But he'll always be your little boy.

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  13. Poor poor Empress. This is a hard one to bear.

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    Replies
    1. I will be hear for you, Jennie, because you and I: so very much alike.

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