BLOCKED AND SCATTERED

"It's all over. There isn't anymore. It's all over. But what's it over for? Just when you think the party's starting... It's over."
It's Over - Squirrel Nut Zippers

This album, the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Perennial Favorites, 1989, was a christmas gift from my oldest son the first year he was living on his own. I love it. It always make me think of him when I play it.

Sunday night, like most of us movie fans, my husband and I were watching the Oscar Awards.

There were five of us. My Seattle sister-in-law. My in town sister-in-law, and one of her friends. Duncan felt lost in a sea of comments about gowns, suits and jewels, and would jokingly throw in a bawdy remark like, "Wow, look at those rockets," just to break up the banal.

We had a good time and laughed a lot.

All the way home ideas where going through my mind of what I'd write on Monday morning. Good ideas. Great title. I was jazzed.

They say the first to go is short term memory. It must be true. Because in the morning. Blank. Oh the idea, the concept of what I'd been thinking was there, but the details. Gone.

I thought, O.K. I'll not focus on it and maybe catch a thread of it out of the corner of my eye, so to speak, and follow it back to the center. So I worked on that premise all day. Nothing.

My mind kept going back to the phone conversation with my oldest son, that Sunday afternoon. He's going through a divorce. It will be final at the end of the month. They had only been married for three and half years.

He said, "This breaks my heart, it has gutted me. What went wrong? I don't understand it." (She had an affair and left) "Did she ever love me? Why did she marry me in in the first place? Can I trust my own perceptions, my own judgements about people? How can I tell what is real? What did I do wrong? I thought I knew her. I loved her, and now it's over."

We talked for sometime. I knew that sorrow he was feeling. I'd gone through it too. With his father. So I knew all those questions. All those feelings.

He said, "I'm hurting right now, but I know I'll be O.K. I know in the future I'll be fine. After all, I have you as an example. You went through this and came out the other side stronger, and happy. I will too."

This is the son who waited till he was 35 to marry, skipping the practice marriage, he used to joke, but I think he really believed.

So, this past week I've been blocked, I just couldn't settle on what to write after losing my funny, cheery post about the awards.

I felt this was just to personal and raw. So I was scattered, my thought all over the place.

There are some things you hope your children will never have to experience. And then they do.

How do you hold them with the tenderest of support?

That unbreakable bond of love that says, "I'm here for you", knowing he knows that, and both of us knowing I'm not, exactly, what he needs.

What I can do is be there without getting in the way of his processing the grief and pain, without adding mine to his soup of emotons right now.

When my two sons were small, they were always best friends.

They live in the same town now, and that not only comforts my oldest son at this time, it is a reassurance to me. When either one of them go through hard times, I know they are not alone, they have each other.

When we were a single parent family I had this image of us standing on a small hill, back to back, protecting each other, like three meerkats scanning the hozion for danger, or anything interesting that might come along.

I still see them that way. Back to back.

These are uncertain times for them both, one through divorce, and one trying out a whole new kind of career.

I think of them every day.

That is one thing I'm not feeling blocked or scattered about. The way I feel about them. I'm proud of them. Not only do I love them, I like them. I always have. They are interesting, talented kids, who have enriched my life, and that party will never be over.