Mothers and sons

Only a fool goes to Wal-Mart on a Saturday, so call me a fool. I knew it would be packed, but I'm glad it was. It seems that what I saw, over and over, were mothers and sons.

When I was a young mother, my own mother (who was so wise in so many ways, despite her alcoholism) would tell me that the days of my boys being children would be too short. Now that my sons are men, and my mother deceased (she would have been so proud of my older son becoming a lawyer), I find myself hearing her voice in my ear as I gaze with longing at frazzled mothers herding rambunctious little boys.

There is nothing sweeter than a hug from a little boy--it's usually an all-out body tackle, scented with dogs, cats, and little-boy sweat. There is nothing more charming than a little boy straight from his bath, with damp hair cow-licking his brow. I recall only too well the feelings I always had as I waited for them to get off the bus--happiness, contentment, energy. Their faces are bursting with grins. The school day has ended. It is time for food. It is time for play. It is time for talking with Mom.

The little boy's happiness turns into the preteen boy's awkwardness, which has its own charm. Suddenly the same little fellow who brazenly ran naked all over the house, defying his mother to dress him, is the shy, modest creature hiding in the bathroom, feeling that his world is ending because he has his first zit. I saw mothers of these boymen, too. Their sons hovered just out of reach, much further from their mothers than the little fellows, who were usually hand-in-hand with Mom. The boyman watches his mother, making sure she doesn't get too far out of sight, for he is now old enough to realize some of the world's dangers--and he is now old enough to know who has the money he'll want to borrow. However, he does not wish to be identified with her--he must be seen as someone full sprung from the earth, cool and laid back and oh-so-casual. He knows that invisibly attached, so that only he and his mother know it's there, is a retractable cord like the sort that recoils suddenly into the back of the vacuum cleaner. If he needs for it to retract, pulling him instantly to his mother's side, he knows it will work because his mother's will is its power source.

It is this stage when the boyman stops talking to his mother except for the most vital of communication. Instead, his verbal eloquence is replaced with body eloquence--the shrug, the scowl, the posture. For some mothers, learning to translate this new language is easy. For others, difficult. But they all learn it, for they must. Their yearning to remain attached to this child is too intense, even though they know deep down that those days are rushing past. With each new fuzzy whisker, the boyman becomes more of a stranger. He metamorphoses into someone she expects her husband to understand, but he does not, for somewhere along the road to adulthood, he has forgotten what it was like to be a boyman. Oddly, this is the time when the father and the son will fight and argue and disagree, though they were best buddies just a few days before and though they will again be best buddies somewhat later.

First, though, the boyman has to evolve into the threat, the hulk, the danger. It doesn't matter how soft, how gentle his nature, suddenly his body has grown to the point where, when he stands, he intimidates. When he speaks, he threatens. Mothers step back, amazed and somewhat frightened. He seems so strong, so angry, so out of control. If there were an MRI that could show what is happening inside him at this time, it would look something like a fireworks display of hormones, and somehow everyone near him can feel the transformation. He is a racing engine, throttle stuck. He is an enraged bull, each contact with others like a stinging cut from the bull fighter. He is Godzilla and King Kong.

And then he goes away. Maybe it's to college. Maybe it's to work. To serve in the military. To be somewhere else other than under his mother's roof. The time he is gone seems endless. When his return is expected, his mother works for days to create the only sacrifice known to appease him--his favorite foods.

They dance around each other awkwardly, not knowing who the other is. Sometimes the reunion is easy, seamless. Often it is not. His voice is deep. His hair isn't right. His smell seems a mix of familiar and strange. Yet this is the first time they converse not as mother and son, but as woman and man. She asks his opinion. He gives her advice. Before he leaves, he'll ask her opinion. He'll accept her advice.

Eventually, the little boy will have his own wife, his own home. When he comes to visit his mother, he will sit next to her on the sofa. He will hold her hand. He'll help her in the kitchen. He'll ask her to tell him what he was like when he was a little boy.

And she'll oblige. Her face will transform with the memories of the sun-kissed cowlick and the pet frogs and the bicycle-scraped knees. He'll listen, perhaps thinking what a foolish and sentimental old thing she has become. His wife, too, will listen, possibly imagining herself with her own stories one day. The only difference will be that, of course, she will be a much better mother.

Next Saturday, instead of spending an hour on the phone talking to his mother, my husband will be at her house, drinking her coffee, eating her cooking, laughing over the stories she'll recall of when he was only "that tall" (said with an arm stretched out and down). In three Saturdays, I'll be sitting in a cramped auditorium in Tulsa, Oklahoma, watching as my little boy is granted a law degree. I'll sit next to my son's wife, and we'll hold hands and cry together, and deep within me, I'll long for the day when she, too, will know the sweet joys of a sweaty full-body tackle from a wiry little kid with a cowlick.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to watch the mothers and sons, even the sons pushing their white-haired mothers in wheelchairs, gently helping them in and out of the car, holding the doors for them, treating them to a coffee or a tea. The umbilical cord never completely disappears. It just grows stronger on the son's end. He is the one who can now will the cord to pull his mother to him. And she will always answer the pull. S.