Good bye Bouncer...

HELLOOOOOO BARTENDER

Good gawd, Bear turned 21 on Saturday.

I can't remember my own 21st birthday, (no, I wasn't that drunk... I'd been legal for years, the drinking age in Michigan was 18 at the time.)

I cried while in the card store choosing the perfect birthday card for my boy.

Bear is one of a kind kind of kid... I like to tell people that when I find myself dozing on the couch and I feel a blanket being gently laid over my shoulders, when I look up, it's always Bear placing it there.

He notices when my feet ache or my heart is broken.

We spent so much time alone together when he was small.. I feel like we're pals.

Many of the cards I looked at had boys on the front that looked a lot like he did.

Dark, thick, tousled haired boys with sturdy hands and bright eyes.

Little boys playing ball, building Lincoln Log fortresses, fishing on the side of a wide stream... the kind of crap that automatically triggers the waterworks in a mother such as me.

The words below were on the card I choose...

"Along the halls of yesterday where happy memories glow, I sometimes see the little boy I loved so long ago.

He fills the house with noisy fun and laughter as he plays, banging doors in eagerness to reach his grown up days...

Today I'm proud to see a man who's grown to warm my heart even more than that small boy I loved so at the start. 


I'm going to miss having a kid around.


"21" is seriously "official" in the "I'm a grown ass man" arena.


I need to get to the mind frame that shouts "what a wonderful job you did with this kid person"...and stop wallowing in the whisper asking me how in the world "I" got old enough to have a baby that can not only drink vodka and not worry about getting caught.... but walk into any liquor store, with a bona fied ID and buy the crap...


YIKES....


Pages turn sister.....yes, yes, yes, they certainly do.


And the sooner you face facts the less you will look like a crazy lunatic.


Okay, yeah, sure.


xoxo..thanks for reading my blog!!

Two for one....

Bear visited a friend at his off campus apartment over the weekend.

He came home with an odd request and an apartment application.

Bear wants to leave home to attend school.

He would leave in August... a bit before his sister permanently changes her address.

I'm not ready to be totally empty nested...not ready at all.

No matter where Bear chooses to attend school, one thing is perfectly clear...

Bear should be going to school to become an attorney.

Like a good attorney, his mind is lightening fast.

And so are his retorts, his counters, and his comebacks.

He exhausts me.

He overwhelms me.

He pecks at my nerves and my reserves until I wave a white flag and wimper "uncle".

The life of a third child, I guess.

You have to be loud (not to mention convincing and rhetorically gifted)...

You have to be all that...or maybe just be able to play your mother like an old fiddle.

So Bear wants to leave me.

And our happy home.

What nerve.

For every rebuttal I had, Counselor Bear had seven.

Finally, he brought up "date night"...

Daddio and I reserve Friday nights as "date night"...

We ask that our grown children make plans to be away from home for the evening.

Go somewhere, out to eat, to the show, give your Dad and I some alone time.

In other words, kids, if the house is a rockin don't come a knockin...

Bear is not so understanding about date night... (he's made it clear as day that he doesn't want to lose his "baby of the family" status)...

He sends texts on date night...

"how much longer do I have to stay away from home?" he will ask...

WOW...talk about a cold shower.

or, on Saturday morning he will complain,

"do you have any idea how much gas can be wasted circling the block for hours waiting for your parents to be done doin what-evvvvvver it is that they may be doing that they want you to leave the house for?"

(he really does say stuff like that)

"The nasty" Bear, that's what they call "it" right...?" sometimes I just can't help myself.

So yesterday as Bear was pleading his case as to why he should be allowed to move from the safety of our home and into a wild bachelor pad some 140 miles from his dear and devoted mother...

The wheels in his brain were cranking so fast I was smelling smoke...

As his closing argument, using all the charm of an award winning furniture salesman Bear delivers his final statement...

"Just think" Bear says "you and Dad could have date night every night..you could have DATE WEEK"!!!!!!

Daddio, in passing, replied "what are you trying to do kid? kill me?"

My gut tells me this issue is not going to find a place on the back burner.

Bear is on a mission.

A Bear tale x's 2.........

The Easter Bunny Gets Duped....

Daddio and I always wanted three children. We both come from families with that number of children. After we had the Sweet Prince Buttercup (who by himself counted as 10 children) and his lovely sister GoogieMonster we decided that 11 was a good number to stop at.

Then my brother John died. And there were only two (earthly) children for my mother to hold.

And faced with the reasoning that if (God forbid) something should happen to my sister that would leave only me..one child for my mother to hold,

inconceivable,

unacceptable,

and so Daddio and I went back to plan A and created child #3...

Child #3, my most cuddly. The one most likely to allow his mother (even at his advanced age) to maul him half to death.

Every mother should have one of him.

I've been known to say a time or two that on those occasions when I may doze off on the couch while watching the tube and should feel myself being covered with a small blanket...I know who's gentle hands will be doing the covering.

Baby # 3.

"That kid's got you soooo wrapped around his little finger" Googie accuses.

"Duped!!!".

Googie, don't be a hater.

Your brother is a nice guy.

When I woke up the morning of my last big (B I G ) birthday next to the coffee pot I found this...

The other side of the mug says "I Love You Mom".

Since a gift this thoughtful usually comes from Googie, I gave her all the credit.

I later learned it was from Bear and was touched by his effort.

On Easter Sunday I found a small bag filled with brightly colored paper grass. Inside the bag there were a couple of mini peanut butter cups and this....

A hand decorated hard boiled egg. On the other side it said "MOM".

When I hopped into Googie's room singing "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" (You should see how mad they get when I do crap like that. tee-hee) at the top of my lungs early on Easter morning with her basket hanging from my arm, I thanked her for the beautiful decorated egg.

Later when Bear came down into the kitchen he asked me how I liked my egg.

"Oh" I said "I loved it".

"Yeah, me and Mal made it for you" he replied.

"Your sister made me that egg. don't lie" I scolded.

"I made that egg" he insisted.

Of all my kids, #3 is the most likely to tell a tale, stretch a truth, bald face lie (while looking me straight in the eye).

"I made the egg!!! " came a voice from the bathroom.

"She didn't make that damn egg, I did" Bear said starting to get mad.

"Look at me" I demanded "did you make that egg???"

His face was as straight as it's ever been.

"Yes, I did" he said again.

"No he didn't" came the bathroom voice again "I did".

Baby boy shook his head no.

I peeked around the corner to see Baby #3's sister...she had her head down on the sink, pounding, with her palm, laughing her guilty lyin azz off.

Googie...Googie how could you?

I am loved.....

Okay, so I do have hearts for iris's when I look at my son, but when he leaves notes like this...

you would too.

Later when I put on my reading glasses and took a closer look....

I got Googie's point.

It's all relative.....

This tiny ladybug, maybe I should call her a babybug was making the rounds of my kitchen counter a few days ago. I normally kill anything that walks on my counters, but she was so damn cute, I just let her be.

She was the smallest ladybug I'd ever seen, and I delighted in watching her explore. When she climbed aboard a penny I ran for my camera.

I thought I'd post the picture on my Picture a Day blog . The ironic relativity of this little itty bitty bug being dwarfed even further by this little money had me thinking I wanted to use this picture somewhere else.

Tomorrow my baby boy will play his last high school basketball game. He'll be playing in the Playoffs, but Thursday will be the last home game.
 
I've dreaded this day for as long as my boys have played ball.

I wondered if I would sit in the stands, tears running down my cheeks hoping no one was looking. I was quite sure that that is how our last game would play out.

My son has had a really hard year, basketball wise. His brother was a high school basketball star and he too was a standout. Their three point shots a family tradition and source of pride.

Until this year.

We all tried to figure out what the hell was up with the kid. Daddio blamed the fact that he didn't practice much over the summer. I blamed the coach. I wanted to jump on his back and sink my buck teeth into top of his balding head (he really is a nice man, but you know how mothers are, right?). My son's girlfriend's father blamed his very own daughter for Bear's surprisingly poor game average. And coach said it was a problem with confidence.

Either way, about 8 games back the coach benched my son. The co-captain of the team was no longer a starter.

He'd been a starter since 3rd grade.

Ouch, this hurt. REALLY REALLY BADLY.

It hurt all of us. During the singing of the National Anthem, I'd sneak a peek at him, while he stood in line waiting for the song to end and the game to begin, I watched for signs of where his heart and his ego stood.

It hurt to think he was embarrassed. Or, disappointed in himself.

When it first happened, I ordered Daddio (if you know Daddio personally, you would know there is no ordering him to do anything) to call the coach and talk with him.

When he refused, I rattled his cage. I poked at him. I ranted and raved.

"Call that asshole and call him NOW!!!" I hissed.

Daddio told our son that if any call was going to be made it should come from the boy himself. That if he was unhappy about his bench warming/non starting position that he needed to call the coach and express his feelings.

This wasn't a small thing Daddio was asking his son to do.

Step up, be a man, take care of your business.

As stupid as this sounds, I cried (seriously cried) for two hours after this conversation. Daddio had gone to rehearsal and the boy had left to visit his girlfriend and when I was all alone I held one of the biggest pity parties of my life.

Never in a million years did I think Bear would make that call. An hour or so later he called to let me know that while his sweetie tanned, in the privacy of his car,  he called his coach and asked "why? and "for how long?" and all the other questions he needed answered.

In my eyes my soft spoken, shy boy became a man that night.

Tomorrow night I'll be so sad to see it come to an end.

But I'll also be so happy that it's over.

I can't believe I made such a big deal out of high school basketball. In the grand scheme of things...it is only high school basketball.

I am so proud of the way my son handled this bump in the road.

With patience, and grace and maturity.

Much better than his mother actually.

I hope he realizes that his life will be filled with things (problems, situations) that feel incredibly large and complicated, but when put into perspective are really quite surmountable and of course never as large as they may appear.

My wishes and hopes and dreams for him go sooooo much deeper than him doing well in basketball.

With that said, I'm still hoping for a three point jumper tomorrow.

Thanks, as always, for listening. xoxoxo

You're gonna miss this......

"cause your gonna miss this
your gonna want this back
your gonna wish these days
hadn't gone by so fast

these are some good times
so take a good look around
you may not know it now
but your gonna miss this"......Trace Adkins

In the morning I get the pleasure of waking him up (still). I climb in next to him and tousle his hair. He asks me to rub his back a minute or two, he's sore from basketball practice.


He has no idea how much that means to me.