it occurs to me that i have not allowed myself to put thoughts about my son here. very, very rarely. i suppose to some, it may seem as if i never think of him or, worse yet, do not care.
nothing could be further from the truth.
it is easy to speak of my daughter. she is a part of my life and has been so without the deep traumas and hurts that the circumstances brought in relation to knowing my son.
there was a time when i could not think of him without immediately crying. there are times, even now, when thinking of him brings tears.
like now.
i remember him as a baby. all blue eyes and laughter and quick to smile. and i remember days spent holding him close and listening to him sleep and knowing that i finally knew what it was to love.
i remember silly songs i used to sing to him. and the way he used to bob his head, even years later, as if the memory was trying to tease its way up past all the hurt.
i remember how hard it was to be strong and stoic, looking into his eyes through the rear view mirror as i drove him home at age 11 and tried to explain what was coming. i wasn’t sure it would make sense to him. i feared it could only be taken as lack of care, even as i know he heard the words that said otherwise.
almost eight years i fought. to this day i am not sure how i held on that long. the false accusations, the horrible lies and the frustration of constantly being forced to fight. fight to love. fight to even try.
i know the logic wasn’t loud enough to overtake the feeling that somehow, it was his fault. i know it both for how he denies any of it mattering and for how the silence distends.
i wish it were possible to tell him and really have him hear how much he is loved. how much he has always been loved. how much he has been in my thoughts. how often i have wondered and how every day, week, month, and year have been filled with offerings of thought and hope toward the day when we might be more than strangers.
there are things i know of him by the hearing of them from others. and there are things i know of him simply because he is my son. i suppose it will sound weird to say it. but i know it.
i know he is tender. i know he is introspective. i know he is kind. i know he is strong. i know he is caring. i know he is thoughtful.
i know he is intelligent. i know he is a writer. i know he has depth and intensity.
i know he is uncertain and i know he is good at covering the things that hurt by denying and hiding them. just as most humans do. sometimes so well that they cannot be seen.
i worry for what i know of that hiding.
i know he is prone to loneliness and feeling alienated, misunderstood, and oddly unable to just ‘fit in’.
i know he sometimes wonders if he is an alien because of it.
and regardless time and wounds, i know he loves me. and i know, somewhere, he knows i love him.
and most of all, when i cry, i do so because i know all of this and i know as well that some hurts are still too tender to even look at, let alone allow to be touched.
my hurts are soothed by the knowledge that the hurts he knows are not as severe as the ones he would have known had his life been further complicated by eternal war between his father, his step-mother, and myself. not always fully soothed, but i take comfort where i can find it.
i look forward to the day when he and i can just talk. i look forward to the day when, face to face, he can hear the things i would say and the words won’t get in the way of what i know he will hear in my voice, what i know he will feel to see in me, of me, from me, that despite appearances and whatever he may have thought or been told, there has never been a time when i was anything less than thankful to know he was in the world…. never any moment in which i have not truly longed for the day when old angers and their inevitable expressions could no more get in the way of saying how glad i am he exists, how much i do and have always cared, always loved him, and how long and impatiently i have waited to have the chance to set it forth with more than words.
my precious son… you have no idea how much, how long, and how deeply you are loved.