The Invisible Umbilical Cord

Summer, the Season of Return

The summer has begun and good stuff is all around. The Spurs are in the NBA finals, and—excepting last night’s stumbling—I’m still feeling pretty good about their chances. Things are still green even if the temperatures are already rising. One of the deer who use our backyard as a potty birthed a fawn whose presence has brought an air of magic to the mornings. My son is home for the summer, along with his delightful girlfriend. And everyone seems happy, except…

I have time to write all I want. I have a support system in place (my husband) who is willing to do all the heavy lifting. I have the space, time, and ideas to finishing the third draft of my novel and forge ahead on my thesis novel. And still…

There is something about when birds return to the empty nest that is unsettling. Perhaps it is because once children leave home, you begin to rebuild who you are separate from them. When they come back, all the old parenting habits/dysfunctions come rushing back, whether they are wanted/appreciated/necessary or not.

Even now, I’m made this time for myself to work and here I am writing about this instead of the other. Oh, well. Once a mother, always a mother.

I’ve had far too many sleepless night in the last two weeks. Up at all hours worrying about all the choices I’ve made as a parent. When my son’s out of the house, I don’t think about it much, but when he’s here, it consumes.

See, my son has a constant complaint that whenever he has a worry or problem or sadness or issue, I always make it about me.

And he’s right. I do.

I have a hard time listening when something is awry, as my self-loathing always finds a way to make whatever the thing is my fault, even if they are not even vaguely connected. This tends to center the conversation around how I feel about how my son feels, rather than his emotions. I’m working on having an empathetic ear, but it’s hard.

The worst part about being this sort of parent is my mother was exactly the same way, and I hated it. I mean HATED it. I am not exactly like my mother. For the most part, I always recognized when I was making a parenting faux pas and tried to reverse it, or, at the very least, apologize. What I am realizing now, is that those apologies always came with an automatic assumption that I would be absolutely forgiven. That sort of apology—with the strings of forgiveness attached—makes it null on arrival.

The difference between me and my son as children is that he is great at boundaries. I never put clear boundaries in place with my mother, and it wasn’t until I was married with a child that I started to get boundaries in place. And then, I only did it because I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to support a household and raise a child and take care of her needs.

In contrast, my son has put boundaries up with me. It’s healthy. We were so close for so long—probably too long—that watching him become an adult and put up fences between himself and his overbearing mother is exactly what he should do. I couldn’t do it with my own mom, and I’m proud that he has the autonomy to grow up. To nurture his emotional needs and protect himself from my inability to caretake my own. My every interaction with him now forces me to reassess how I approach our new “adult” relationship, which is great.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

My son is a deeply empathetic and sensitive creature. It’s one of my favorite things about him. It’s also a trait that we are share, intimately. I had the same connection with my mother. She called it the “invisible umbilical cord.” She shared it with my son, as well. With him she called it “heart, mind, soul.”

That connection is a precious thing to share with a child, no matter what age. It should be honored and cared for and cherished and defended. Sometimes, I feel like he’s cut me off, but then I get a twinkling—a head on the shoulder, the excitement of seeing the fawn in the yard, a tear over something we both thought was beautiful—and remember.

It’s still there.