Fleeting (Thank God?)

 I feel bad (badly?) because I waited so long for SeongJoon, before I even knew it was him, geez, before he was even born to his sad, sad, probably everlastingly tearful parents—before they had this tragedy enter their lives that would end so happily for me…

Anyway. I feel bad that I waited and hoped and checked the Internet 50 million times each day and worried myself into a stress illness and now I’m savoring my probably 20 minutes alone before I again hear: ma? ma? From Frankie’s room (he’s napping) and Mommy, just 20 minutes on the iPad. I promise. I promise. I million times promise, from Alvin (now bowling with grandma).

I’m drinking champagne given to us at SeongJoon’s homecoming (so it’s really his) out of an Archie glass and reading short stories and now typing this. When he wakes up we’ll go to Target for fake meat and pool chlorine and probably mascara. I always end up buying mascara lately with names like Falsies, names whose promise I cannot resist.

I waited and waited and waited for this trip to Target. For someone to call me ma and mommy (the latter kind of happened without waiting, but then I realized how wonderful it was and wanted it to happen more and more and again and again and always. Only it can’t happen always. Even if we had 54 children, eventually they would leave to lead their own lives. And if they didn’t that’d be kind of sad and pathetic for them and for me. Because I’d be the mom of a son who’d never left home.)

And I love these small moments. I totally do. I bought some kind of thing at Hobby Lobby that you roll onto your wall, a quote done in calligraphy, and I’m going to roll it onto this pure-white wall and stick an empty frame over it: Life Consists of Short Little Moments. Hmm, the editor in me thinks it should have been: Life is Short Moments, or something. Regardless, I’m not the Hobby Lobby type. I’m putting it up there to remind myself. Because pretty soon I’m going to be a retired person (one hopes I get there and have the money) puttering around and sitting on my front porch reading The Year We Left Home like I did today (only maybe it’ll be Maeve Binchy or something) and I’ll be doing it not to savor the aloneness, but to fill the day. And then I’ll garden. And make cookies. And try to coax my sons to call.

Or maybe I’ll have a funny laugh-and–banter-and-get-each-other relationship like the story I always plan to write about the 50 year old gay man taking care of his elderly mother. About moving back home to feed her lines and to set her up for the punch lines she knows he’ll deliver, so she kind of feeds him too to get toward that, back and forth like baby birds. But then he washes her or helps her into bed and that’s not so funny at all. Awkward. But that’s filial love. And his boyfriend at home understands.

Probably Alvin won’t be doing that. And probably thank God. I’ll get a home healthcare worker in. But maybe he can go with me to my doctor’s appointments. Help me set them up, too, because even now I have to push myself to dial, knowing I’ll wait on hold a full hour only to make an appointment that I’ll immediately realize upon hanging up conflicts with a picnic we’d planned for two years or something. Back to the hold music.

Why am I so morbid today? There’s only ten minutes left of naptime now, I calculate. I should clean the refrigerator or something. Instead I’m going to loaf around on some style blogs. And phone my beloved grandmother to joke around.