There should be a word akin to “senioritis” that applies to parents who, near the time their adult children are leaving home, completely check out.
I didn’t know this was a thing, having thought the months before CJ’s departure for art school in Kanas City would be filled with loving remembrances of the childhood recently passed, and the bright adulthood that’s moved within reach.
“Mom, Char’s going to be visiting the U.S”.
“Mm-hmmm.”
“Mom, Char’s coming to St. Louis.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Mom, Char’s going to stay at a hotel in Belleville.”
“Right, right … Have you fed the cat?”
”Mom, Char needs a ride from the train station on Tuesday.”
“Wait … what?
“FUCK! MOM! I got the date wrong and Char needs a ride from the train station in four hours!”
”Fuck! CJ! Wait … who’s Char again?”
Char is an 18-year-old CJ met on a Discord art server years ago. She’s Israeli and has Dissociative Identity Disorder.
That’s the medical term for having multiple personalities.
I know. I had a lot of questions at this point, too.
I first met Char when CJ and Brian (CJ’s dad) stopped at the house to meet me and get my approval. Being in the parental senioritis that led to being stunned by this person’s arrival from Tel Aviv, Char met me while I was on the couch in pajamas, a little bit high because frankly, this was a lot of reality to take in all at once.
My Mom Brain™ was fully engaged in thinking, “Who is taking care of this child who has just come to a new country for the first time and is staying in a seedy motel?! LET ME FEED YOU AND TUCK YOU IN NOW, CHILD.”
Senioritis: Mom Edition® said, “Eh, Char’s 18. CJ’s 19. They’re grown-ass adults and can figure this shit out.”
Both moms were correct, although Senioritis: Mom Edition® stepped back when Char said, “I think I might have goofed on my flight to Chicago.”
She had gotten a call from the Israeli military before take-off.
She hung up on them.
I needed a lot more information because this bit of news, coupled with what I thought I knew about the Israeli military, added up to commandos parachuting from the roof of my house the next day.
There were no commandos. The call was just an offer for Char to get some service hours toward her required service if she wanted them.
A few days later, on our way to a bagel shop in the small Illinois town of Wood River, I told Char that this information didn’t match the American stereotype of the Israeli military. Char was surprised. “You have a stereotype of us? What is it?”
I told her the truth: we think that all Israeli soldiers can Krav Maga us to death.
She assured me that this wasn’t the case. The Israeli Army is a lot more laid back than I originally thought.
Having checked my prejudice and verified that I wasn’t harboring an AWOL IDF soldier attempting to defect, I was free to overthink this Dissociative Identity Disorder situation.
We know so little about how the human brain works and what it’s capable of doing. Or why. I didn’t ask Char what caused her DID because I don’t want strangers asking me why I have a PTSD diagnosis in my file. DID can be caused by trauma and isn’t living in a perpetual war zone enough to count? DID was a non-issue. Watching Cybil in high school psychology class totally over-prepared me.
Char stayed in Belleville for two weeks. This was a long-postponed Bat Mitzvah gift, dragged out by health issues and the pandemic, years during which Char and CJ had hours upon hours to talk.
I understand how a friendship can form like this. When I was in middle school, I had pen pals. It was a way to share my interests with people who were also “that weird kid” in their hometown. What I didn’t realize was how those thousands of pages of handwritten and typed letters were also writing practice. If matter is never destroyed, somewhere in the universe resides pages upon pages of letters of critical review regarding the brilliance of The Hooters*.
When I was 13 my parents took me to Florence, Alabama during our summer vacation so I could meet Tori, my favorite pen pal. For several days I stayed with her family while my parents stayed nearby and took in the sights of northwest Alabama. Then Tori returned to Missouri with us, flying home about two weeks—was it really two weeks? I can’t remember—later. It was a wonderful, exhausting time, and, being in eighth grade, I didn’t know how to manage those conflicting feelings. Within a few months, for no good reason I can recall or more likely reasons that are only logical to a 14-year-old, I ended our friendship.
(Of course, upon joining Facebook she was one of the first people I searched and now we share TikToks of Jennnifer Coolidge and Pedro Pascal on the regular.)
Despite the unfortunate way my dumb ass ended things months later, Tori and I handled our actual two weeks together well. We cackled and shrieked until morning hours, watched a lot of MTV, walked all over my hometown, had friends sleep over—very much an idyllic 1986 summer.
Not until Char came to visit CJ did I realize how utterly absurd it was to travel, leave a kid at a stranger’s house for a few days, then drive home with said stranger’s own kid, who then flew home by herself.
We’re out there globe-trotting around the South and Midwest using a technique that reads like a chapter in a trafficking how-to guide.
I wasn’t alone in my feelings of, “Who sends such a young infant child of 19 to another country on their own?” So many friends echoed this question to me.
It was during one of those echos that the image of Tori’s plane taking off, watching with my greasy teenage face pressed against the airport window, came to mind.
Tori and I were kids.
Char and CJ are adults.
I am no longer the mother of a child.
My life as the mother of a child will end on August 17, 2023,
There is an expiration date.
Spare me the, “CJ will always be your baby.” I get that.
But I also get that this is the twenty-year culmination of gestating, birthing, and raising a child into an adult. That part is done.
There’s a line in a song by my future ex-husband Greg Dulli, a lament to a departing lover:
I’m getting ahead of me,
but I know
As you shuffle off to bed
You’ll never sleep in my house again.
And that line goes through my head every night when CJ walks down the hall to their bedroom. I call out, “Goodnight! I love you!” out of habit and heart. They always call back that they love me, too.
I get to do that 13 more times. And then they won’t live here anymore. After nearly 7,000 nightly “Goodnight! I love yous,” there will be a last one as people who share a home without an expiration date.
I’m glad we’re here.
I’m devastated we’re here.
I know I’m not sending my kid halfway around the world into the world of strangers, as Char’s parents did. That doesn’t stop me from getting a weird chill upon realizing I haven’t taken CJ to the train station in Kansas City so how will they ever know how to find the right train to get home?
How will I know what to do with all this silence? After two weeks of the giggles and shrieks of two children in my house?
Last weekend CJ and I did take an Amtrak trip to visit my parents. CJ wanted a refresher course since it had been six years since their last train trip. While away from home CJ had a minor health issue, the kind that’s old hat if you’ve experienced before but a little terrifying when it’s new.** Both days, after very little sleep, CJ shook me awake in the early morning hours, scared and upset.
I got up in Mom Mode®—soothing, cleaning, fetching supplies, sending photos of insurance cards and IDs to urgent care in a town that hasn’t been my home for over 30 years. Because after I moved to college, I never moved back.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how I feel about any of this other than conflicted and unbelieving while a buy twin/XL bedsheets, packages of ramen, bottles of melatonin to cradle them to sleep. Everything’s organized by use. All these supplies, washed and packed in clear Rubbermaid tubs in my living room, waiting to go to Kansas City. Because in May I had the great idea to spend the summer slowly gathering everything CJ might need during first semester. I’ve been methodical, ticking items off my to-buy list, moving them to my bought list. More involved and focused than I ever was twenty years ago when I was pregnant.
Just as I get the hang of this, it’s over.
*The Philadelphia band. Not the restaurant chain.
**Yep, period stuff.
lord have mercy. i can't take this. too soon. too soon. CJ was just a toddler.
Angus is 11. I have seen him about 3 weeks in total this summer. He's been travelling with both sets of grandparents extensively. And now he's home....and with his friends. He didn't go to Costco with me last night WTF!?! He stayed home to play online with his friends. I don't want to think about adulthood...and yet...I can feel it. I feel it lurking up around the bend and can tell it's a fucker.