No TALKING to My Friends! Mum!

I drove 400 miles in six hours’ time and then kept myself awake until midnight yesterday so I could send a Happy Birthday text to someone whose fate was closely linked to my own in a delivery room once. Drove from Boston clear to Albany and back to record seven  ‘commentaries’ for  Northeast Public Radio, to me the best Pubic Radio station in the whole country hands down.

One of these pieces I offer below here, because it's about this boy of mine. Its tenderness makes me blush a little, but how can I not return nostalgically to those days, as someone who is still trying to get used to the fact that he’s not nearby anymore? The fact  that he doesn’t bang in the back door like his big sisters do, cracking open a beer and talking a mile a minute?

~ Sigh ~  Anyway, here’s who that boy was in the 8th grade. Who I thought he was anyway. Who we all were maybe:

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They say boys separate from their fathers either by beating them at what the dads do best or refusing to compete at all. How girls separate from their moms I remember well. Our oldest used to spend hours talking on the phone in my home office and writing little notes on my all my stuff. (“I’m not writing on your stuff” these notes sometimes said) but about how a boy separates from his mom I know only this: It’s isn’t quick and it isn’t easy.When my boy was 12 he thought I was the best thing since Tic Tacs. I used to go into his school every year to talk about Writing From Personal Experience, maybe even get the kids to try it.First we’d loosen up by telling stories, like the one about how my underpants fell down when I was seven. I was the Flag Bearer at a full-dress Flag Raising ceremony, with nary a hand to spare lest Old Glory touch the ground, when the elastic snapped and those little panties descended – and fast.Kids love stuff like this, and before we knew it, everyone in the class was laughing, and no one more than my own child.But by the time he turned 13 I just seemed to embarrass him.His teacher called up that year to ask If I’d help chaperone a field trip to see “Romeo and Juliet” on stage. I quick switched some appointments and jumped at the chance.Michael left the room when he heard the news.“OK, a few ground rules,“ he said on his return:  “No talking to anyone. No sitting near me in the theater. No explaining the play to the kids beside you.”Well, I failed on all three counts. We tried again with the carpools-to-out-of-town-soccer-games issue.“Parents don’t talk when they do these carpools!” he said through gritted teeth. “They just drive and keep quiet.”I failed again - repeatedly even.  He just needed a little distance, maybe.He got it that summer, He went away to a camp in the Berkshires called Emerson , a camp that happens to be on the same 130 acres as the one I went to for 11 years, owned by my family and called Fernwood in those years.Halfway though his time there we went to visit him.He was making some separation progress anyway:  a child who for years refused to even pick up a tennis racquet at his father’s invitation suddenly said, “Dad! Want to volley?” When they rejoined his sisters and me the two of them were  smiling, if winded. “I’m awesome!” reported the son. “I crushed him!” said his father.“Hey, Mike!” I spoke up then. “Let’s you and I walk over to the girls’ cabins.” I wanted to see if my name was still there, carved high in the rafters.“Are you kidding?  I’m not allowed to go there!”“C’mon it’s Family Day!” I said. “Even the girls cabins will be crawling with males! And if they ask, I’ll tell them I went to camp here.” And I started on alone.Suddenly he was right there beside me. “OK, go to Bunk J,” he said, walking fast. “Quick, got a pen?” he said. I gave him one. “I’ll stand guard,” I said. Then he ducked into the empty bunk, stood on a girl’s trunk, and amid 60 years worth of names, wrote “Mike Marotta” in bold caps high on the cabin wall.“A fine influence YOU are!” said his dad when we got back and reported the deed. My boy and I just traded a little smile I remember. And all I could think was “maybe we’ll separate next year.”