Newton, Iowa

My teenager graduates this weekend. Six days from today, to be precise. Every mama who's graduated a kid knows this feeling, I'm sure: a combination of "Oh, thank god" and "Where did the time go?"

Yesterday he was packing up parts of his room, since he'll spend the summer with his dad in Iowa and start at the U of Iowa in the fall. We still haven't hammered out how to finance his school year yet. Apparently being unemployed is not enough to get some serious financial aid. But that's not the topic of this post.

In 1992, I lived in Newton, Iowa, then home to Maytag Corp.'s corporate headquarters and a county seat about 30 miles east of Des Moines. I was a reporter at the local paper, though that summer I moved on to a weekly newspaper in Des Moines, aka the Big City in Iowa. I don't remember the pregnancy test I took that  February morning -- I know I didn't go into work that morning to do my usual cop beat. I just remember sitting on a hand-me-down couch, with its slightly scratchy nubby fabric, kindly donated to my first barren apartment by a newspaper colleague. I remember dialing my fiance's phone number. He was my college sweetheart. We hadn't been engaged long. Things had been kind of tough between us -- we lived about three hours apart, which was among our challenges. I got him on the phone and told him I was pregnant. I was terrified. And crying. I made a pittance as a reporter and was barely getting by. How on earth was I going to support a baby?

I also remember calling my parents from that same spot -- I truly can't remember if it was before or after I called my fiance. My mother, who for Pete's sake was only 42 or 43 (um, my age now!) was giddy about the prospect of her first grandchild. My dad, who just happened to be home, too, spoke to me soberly but kindly. I'll never forget how he told me he'd support me no matter what, and that he loved me. I was so sure my parents would be disappointed in me. Sure, I was 23 at that point and had graduated college and had a job -- but I was still a kid in so many ways.

We got married the next month, a city hall affair, on a really chilly, gray March day.. I wore an off-white suit-ish kind of dress with only a half slip, so pictures of the back of me have a lovely slip line at my thickening waistline. My new husband eventually got a job in Des Moines -- and so did I. We had a crash course that summer in living together, being married and getting ready for a baby. That fall I thought I was going into labor a million times. It got a little embarassing how many times I was sent home because I had indigestion, not labor. I was hospitalized a couple of weeks before I was due because I had pre-eclampsia -- I had a second job at a pizza joint. It was homecoming weekend and they weren't happy to lose someone to work such a busy weekend. But I knew my pizza days were done for now.

Finally I was induced on my due date after a couple of days of labor pains. There was a presidential debate on -- Clinton, Perot and Bush (remember Perot???). I was in really hard labor at that point and struggled to watch it in a haze of whatever miserably failing pain med they had given me in the hospital. To this day I still do not miss a debate, no matter what! But don't quiz me on what was discussed that night. Finally, 22 hours after being admitted to the Newton hospital, T was born. It was one of the happiest days of my life. I couldn't believe this beautiful little boy belonged to me, this wiggly, slimy thing the nurse handed me. I never knew I could love so hard and deeply until that day.

Now that beautiful boy is packing up his room (OK, as I write this he is watching YouTube videos). He has a little beard stubble, just barely. He's tall and lanky and could stand to brush his teeth a bit more often. But he's also handsome and whipsmart and I know he'll be great at whatever he decides he wants to be someday.

In between his birthday in October 1992 and now have been a crazy load of events that included a divorce from his dad, unfortunately not my proudest moment  -- I had a lot of growing up to do; a move to Milwaukee and later Chicago; Catholic school; Chicago public schools; swimming lessons; little league football, baseball and basketball; the horrible murder of a classmate in the eighth grade; the death of his godfather to cancer; my remarriage (after years of dating my husband) and the birth of his little brother and sister, now 2 years old and three months old; his first girlfriend, four years of cross country and track; learning to play the tenor sax and subsequent band concerts. We lived in a lot of different apartments. I remember trying to explain September 11 to him. I put him on a plane to D.C. when he was about sixth grade for a special scholars program, funded in part by his dad and the rest by my generous husband, since I couldn't afford to send him. I sobbed after seeing him get on a plane and go so far away from me. I can go on. Most moms and dads can. (He had a great time. I still have the earrings he bought me from one of the Smithsonian museums.)

It's been tough around here lately. He's been difficult. I've been perplexed. And sad. And pissed off. Why when we have these few weeks left does it have to be so difficult? Where is that boy who, when it was just me and him (say, if my husband, his stepdad, was out for an evening, for example), would snuggle up next to me on the couch when he was as tall as me as we munched pizza and watched a movie? Now he posts crap on Facebook that repulses me. He had senioritis, which I keep telling him is not a real condition. And yet, I keep trying to convince myself that it's supposed to be difficult. If everything was peaches and cream parents would never want their kids to leave and kids would never want to leave, right? And someday there would be no grownups to run the planet, haha.

Soooo, I will just take it day by day and enjoy the good moments, like tonight, having grilled barbecue chicken on the patio, and planning some stuff for this week to celebrate graduation. And I'll just let myself get teary when I feel it coming on. My hub expects it and is very sweet about it. The bad moments will remind me why it's time for him to go. And I'm already eyeballing his room and what I can do to it when he leaves, heh heh. But I'll never forget that day in Newton, Iowa, when I first got to hold him and I had no idea what the next 18 years would bring. What if someone could tell you that when you're first holding your baby? Would it  be a good thing, or make you run for the hills?