And not just my own. I genuinely cannot see a baby without wanting to sing to them, a toddler without making a goofy face or smiling at them, an awkward pre-teen without wanting to hand them a good book, or a teen without wanting to let them know I’m around if they need anything.

And it wasn’t even a thing I grew into. I have always felt this deep-rooted maternalesque bond with kids, even before I went into foster care. I think it’s partially biological, like I was born to care for smaller things. But I know it’s also environmental. Each time I moved, I felt more of a need to demonstrate strength and compassion to any younger child, to show them that not everyone bigger than them was cold, screwed up, or downright mean. It was important to me to help guide, show patience, and listen.

In all that listening, I found out really quickly that children are great company. They drive me insane at times, mouths and noses running like they’re competing in the olympics. A few years back my oldest son was saying “Mom. Mom. Mom.”, a thing I’ve learned to nearly tune out, as if the “Mom” is silent. “Whaaaaat?”, I’d said. He thought about it. “I don’t know. I don’t think I wanted anything. It’s just a habit.” And kids can be a lot to deal with when they’re in the midst of figuring out things for themselves, or when they’re feeling embarrassed, but too proud to apologize.

However, kids are one of the biggest delights in my life, in the way they word things, the sweaty heads of little boys who’ve been running around in parks, the observations that they make about adults, the sticky hands wrapped around your neck while they nap off the exhaustion of a post-carnival day, the first swear word uttered in front of a parent, the belief that a kiss on a scrape is an anesthetic, the high pitched giggle at every fart joke, the way they grow into and out of each phase of their lives.

I’m always a little bit put off at the inclusion of so many  child characters in movies or on tv who are precocious and say things wise beyond their years, not just because it’s over-done, but because on their own, it’s much more interesting to see a child figuring things out with kid-logic. The way kids think is pretty damn special already.

And with that, I’ll leave you with the trailer for my favorite movie of 2012, in which the main character poetically shows us that wonderful way that only a child can piece things together.

Beasts of the Southern Wild trailer

The bus smells like old milk today. Every day. I hate sitting in the middle of the long busses, right in the weird, hinged part that rocks back and forth as the bus makes a turn. It’s the part with accordion walls, and I’ve got no choice, because it’s the only seat free. This isn’t a carnival ride. I’d prefer the only moving parts of my motor vehicle be the wheels.

I’m headed to Brentwood School. My son hears that they don’t even really have to study there. My son hears they just sit around in circles like a bunch of hippies, and that the students sometimes just leave and go to the beach. I wonder where my son hears things like this, and I remember that these legends of other schools are as old as the day the second one-room schoolhouse opened up in one area. I roll my eyes when he starts in on subjects like cafeteria food, the things other parents let their kids do, the way things were so awful in this school or that town. He’s 14. Let him have it. In a few years he’ll be in college talking about how good his high school choir was. Then after that it’ll be job stuff, small town stuff. There will always be stories to tell about these things.

Brentwood School is beautiful. These kids are all sitting outside, eating fancy chicken kabobs and fire roasted vegetables. They’re dressed like the magazines. They look like the movies. Their voices are like the radio. The campus looks like a resort. A bell rings and they don’t move quickly at all. The teachers are dressed casually, expensively. The butterflies even act like they might not know there’s a harsher version of life out there with windshields to hit like a hobo hitting rock bottom. It’s an innocent place, and there’s not a lot of pressure to do well.

On the bus, sitting across from me, this old man has a face with lines so deep they could have been written by Steinbeck. He has white whiskers, sores on his arms, and his trucker hat is falling apart like it’s been listening to overwrought country songs. He’s holding onto an envelope that looks as worn down as his skin, but the envelope appears to be empty.

Doors of classrooms close, and a group of students stand outside of the art room, spray painting skateboards. They aren’t laboring over the work. They’re just spraying. A group of kids pass me and they’re talking about how they really wish some girl’s self esteem was better. They say that she’s really pretty, but she’s so down on herself that it makes it hard to spend time with her. This is what these kids talk about, I guess. I think I was talking about smoking weed or some guy I liked who didn’t like me back, or how much of a bitch my parent/guardian/best friend was being.

Brentwood School

The old man lifts the envelope to his cheek, dabs his face with it, returns it to his lap, reads it. He does this again and again. The envelope has a name on it- Suzanne. Her name is written in purple, cursive like the kind your mom used when she was writing notes to the school office excusing your absence.

I sit for a minute in the courtyard of the school. I’m early. When I take the bus I give myself extra time. I am nervous. I don’t know that I relate to these kids at all. I am about to talk to them about sex. I imagine their dating lives. I imagine their homes, their parents. A boy comes running up a hill, and he’s pushing a girl in a blue mop bucket. Her legs are sticking straight up out of the bucket like carrot sticks. I see his RUNDMC shirt and I think an old person’s thought. “I wonder if he even knows who RUNDMC is.” So be it, I’m old.

Suzanne. Who is she? What was originally in this envelope? It’s possible this is just an envelope he found in the trash. Each morning there are people who come by my house with their shopping carts and dig through my trash, right outside my window. They take more than the recycling. I’ve shuddered many times at the thoughts of the junk their hands have touched. I have taken to double bagging my bathroom trash. Maybe he just needed a soft thing to rub against his face. But then he puts the envelope back in his lap, reads the name, touches it with a hard, yellow finger.

In the classroom, everything is going well. These teenagers, at the meat of it, they’re just like any others. One boy asks if I could be his mother. I tell him I’m no fun at all as a mom. I’m not just saying that. Later that night I tell my son. We talk about the kind of grandmother I’d be. He says I’d be a bad influence. I was never a bad influence on him. He just does the opposite of what I do, and it all works out well.

I’m openly staring at the man, but he’s gracious or removed enough that he doesn’t look back at me, challenge me to stop. It’s impolite, but there’s nothing else to look at. I suppose I could stare at my phone, or count BMWs out the window. He lifts the envelope to his face again. Dabs his cheek. He’s crying. The envelope returns to his lap, and he’s staring at her name as if it’s one of those optical illusion puzzles that were so popular in the 90s. What’s he going to see in that name if he relaxes his eyes just right?

The kids ask me questions. They ask me about orgasms, nipples, why some men get man-boobs. They ask me what my life was like. One girl asks if I was ever raped. They ask me why people like the things they do. They ask me about love. They ask me about love. Again, and again, they ask me about love.

I can answer anything at all about sex, the body, the way it all works, the psychology of the fetish, the medical explanation for the process of getting a boner. But I don’t know fuckall about love. What I know best is the absence of love, because the absence is around us more often than love proper. I don’t know anything about love that you don’t, kids. I want to find Suzanne. I want to find the old man. I want to fill up the envelope with whatever was needed to keep her around. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s an apology. Maybe it’s less time spent at the dog track, pissing away the rent. Maybe it’s a few more years of life, or better access to health care. I want to know what to say when a young girl with a ponytail and a striped shirt asks me “How do you know for sure that you’re in love?” I want the answer to be better than “Sometimes you don’t know until it’s too late.”

Trast is headed out to New York tomorrow. It’s totally nuts, but whenever I am away from him for more than two days, I get really sad about it.

I suppose that’s because we spend so much time together. We cook dinner together nearly every night. We go to events together. We watch shows together. One of our favorite ways to pass time is to talk about music history and make music.

Lately, he has been completely Asperger’s about playing guitar. He plays guitar every second he can, relates every conversation to guitar, and even practices chords when he’s not holding a guitar.

Today we recorded ourselves covering one of the songs he remembers me singing to him when he was a little kiddo. Hopefully having this video around will help me not miss him so much over the next four days while he’s in New York without me.

“Mom. Have you ever stolen a car?”

“Dude. No. Of course I haven’t. Do I seem like the sort who would steal a car?”

Silence for a few moments, then Tim speaks up.

“If I heard you’d stolen a car, I wouldn’t exactly find it shocking.”

Trast adds, “Yeah. I’d believe it.”

What the hell would shock someone?

“Well, do you grind your teeth when you sleep?”

“Do adults realize how stupid their questions are sometimes?”

“Watch it, pal. Just asking a question to try to help figure out why your jaw hurts.”

“How the heck would I know? I’m asleep.”

Because CANCER, son

“My mom sent me out to get these.”

As if there was any danger that the man working the register at CVS would think that my 14 year old son was buying a box of store brand, regular absorbency tampons for his own personal use.

This is a kid who still hangs out in my room from time to time, watching movies with me late into the night. This is a kid who regularly makes 69 and masturbation jokes directly to me, his mother, without his face getting red at all. This is a kid who carried me over his shoulder to the can so I could take a dump when I was too weak from chemo to walk. This is a kid who changed bandages on my ass while it was oozing puss because I had a flesh eating bacteria. And yet, as I laid in bed, unable to sit up, and whispered, “I need you to go to the… store. I need tampons.”, this kid said, “No.”

And at first I was too shocked to say anything. I laid there, blinking, bleeding, and confused. No? I didn’t understand. Was he holding out for a bit of the ol’ bribery? Did I need to offer money or candy? Was he saying no because of the bike ride?

“It’s really close, Trast. And you can get yourself something.”

“Tampons? No.”

But, the thing is, I needed the tampons and there was no way I could drive or walk anywhere to get them. Not only was my head spinning from the latest radiation zap, the cramps and pain were ungodly. So, I had to pull the parent card and force the kid to go get the damn tampons, anyway.

When he got home, he told me about the exchange with the guy at the check out.

“Yeah, well, wait until you get married. You’ll have to get them all the time.”, the check out guy had said to him, sharing a commiserating smirk and head shake.

Somehow this helped my son, who reported being “relieved that nobody else was around to see”.

“Yeah well,” he’d retorted to the guy, “that’s a good enough reason to stay single.” (Cue laugh track. What is he, Archie Bunker?)

But, when he told me about this as he tossed a box of ‘pons to me, I asked him why periods make him so squeamish. He said he didn’t know, so I told him to think about it.

“Well, I guess, if it’s something girls are already embarrassed about, why wouldn’t I be? You’ve seen those commercials, right? The ones where the girl is talking about how she has all those techniques for hiding the tampons? Those commercials are stupid, because the solution is that the tampon company changed the packaging so now it’s brighter colors. Like, ‘Embarrassed of your period? We’ve added fireworks to your tampons.’ Anyway, the point is, I don’t have to have a good reason to be weird about tampons. But I don’t need a good reason.”

And I tell him that if he just relaxes and is one of the few dudes between the ages of 12 and 25 who doesn’t act stupid about periods, he’ll totally set himself apart as awesome. I remember a few guys over the years being chill about it, and those guys were a huge relief to be around.

“Thanks for the advice, mom, but here’s something you don’t seem to understand. I,” and he points his thumb at his chest, just in case I might think he means anyone else, “am really okay with not being awesome.”

Fair enough, son. Fair enough.