Chapter 9: Family Time

Monday, August 12, 1985

We slept until ten, which was quite late for us. Under the circumstances, it was perfectly understandable. I could also have understood waking up at two or three, since that would’ve been morning in Britain, but we’d apparently largely reset our biological clocks.

That, or we’d be nodding off around by late afternoon and up in the early hours of the morning tomorrow. We had been exhausted when we went to bed, after all.

As late as we slept, it wasn’t as late as Angie and Paige. Angie’s door (their door, I supposed) was still closed when I emerged. Jas let me have the bathroom first, provided I was quick.

I was, so I got to live.

Mom waved as I was heading back to the bedroom, and said, “I didn’t start breakfast because I wasn’t sure when you’d be up. I’ll get things cooking now that you are.”

“Thanks, Mom!” I said.

I opened the bedroom door a bit and called “All yours!”

After that, I headed over to Mom and gave her a big hug.

She hugged me right back.

“I love you, Mom,” I said.

“Aww!” she said, smiling. “I love you, too, my son!”

“I need you to do something for me,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” I said. “If we’re away too long and it starts feeling like the bad sort of empty nest, tell us, please.”

“Oh!” she said, blushing a bit. “I ... um ... I can do that.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling. “We would find out, I think, and we would all feel really bad if we found out after the fact. And, if we didn’t find out, that might be even worse.”

“Thank you!” she said, still blushing. “That means a lot!”

“You and Dad mean a lot to us,” I said. “All of us. We can’t be here as much as we were, of course...”

“And we wouldn’t want you to be!” she said, smiling.

“That, too,” I said. “But we don’t want to be gone so long that you feel like we’re taking you for granted. You’ll always be important to us.”

Jas had come out, and she said, “You will! We all mean that.”

“Thanks, honey!” Mom called. She was blushing again.

Jas said, “You’re welcome!” and scooted off to the bathroom.

“We’re still figuring this stuff out,” I said, smiling. “I mean, being adults. I’m sure you and Dad both had some adventures of your own figuring out how things should work with Grandma and Grandpa and with Grandmother and Professor Berman, and we can learn from you. Maybe the same things won’t work, but something will.”

Mom chuckled.

“Well, what worked for me with Ma and Pa won’t work for you!” she said, winking. “I didn’t move out until years later! But ... well, maybe that made it harder, in the end. I don’t think I know, really!”

“We’ll all figure it out together,” I said.

She hugged me again, looking up at me, and said, “You know...”

She paused, sighed, and said, “It’s ... four years ago, I think, or just a little more, I could start seeing you and Angie turn the corner and become young adults. Honestly, it scared me! For me, because it meant seeing you less, but also for you, because ... well, being an adult can be hard. Then ... well, time went by, and you convinced me you had everything more figured out than most teenagers seem to. And not just you, but Jasmine and Paige, too. We let go, knowing that would hurt, but ... somehow, you had that figured out, too, and you made sure it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. Maybe your summers at Indiana and Northwestern helped. At the time, I worried so much, having you so far away for so long. But you stayed in touch and did great! So, when you moved to College Station, I knew you’d be fine. I really can’t imagine how I would have gotten through you all being across an ocean for a month without that! It went ... honestly, it went fine, though. We got phone calls and postcards and you never felt too far away.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “We missed you, and we always miss you, but ... well, you tell me. You must have done that with your mother.”

She nodded.

“Oh, my, yes! Ma and I were very close, especially with my not moving out and working in town.”

She paused, then chuckled.

“Ma isn’t wrong when she said I wasn’t interested in boys, either. I say, now, that I was waiting for Sam without knowing he existed, but ... well, maybe that is it. No other boy felt even vaguely like what I wanted. Anyway, when we moved away, I’d want to talk to Ma, and I just had to wait until our phone calls. And, with what long-distance cost, it had to be brief! We got over it, of course, but it was hard for a while. I could just drive up for a while, but then we moved to Los Angeles, and then to Houston, and it meant a plane trip. But, by then, we mostly had it figured out.”

She sighed, smiled, and added, “I have to say, even if it’s a bit selfish: I was pretty happy when you chose Texas A&M. It’s far enough away that we won’t just drop in, which really is probably a good thing, but it’s close enough that you all come down here more often than if you had to fly.”

“So far, it’s been a great fit for us,” I said. “I can’t imagine that’ll change. We’re very happy with our choice. And, yes, part of that is being able to visit more easily.”

“You’re all such good kids,” she said. “Or ... good people, I should say. Not so much ‘kids’ anymore.”

I chuckled and said, “We still call our peers at A&M ‘kids,’ for the most part. ‘College kids’ is a time-honored phrase. We’re grown up, but we’re also not, exactly.”

She stretched and said, “I should get to making breakfast, but ... thanks, Steve. This means a lot. And ... I promise. If it starts feeling like something is off, I’ll say something. Just you asking means I really should.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said.

She paused, and I could tell there was something there beyond waiting for me to go.

After a few seconds, she gave me a different smile, a smile that was perhaps from the girl she had been. Or, maybe, the girl she still was, inside. I’d been in my mid-50s, after all, and I knew that feeling of connecting to the ‘me’ I’d been earlier in life, the ‘me’ that never really went all the way away.

“I...” she started, then waved her hand. “You don’t want to hear my silliness.”

“Oh, I do, Mom,” I said. “We always have.”

She chuckled a bit, but then nodded.

“That’s true. You always asked. Well ... okay. The thing is, it is hard sometimes, letting go. But it’s also ... Sam and I had a few years, and then you came along. I wouldn’t change a second of having you — even the scary parts, in retrospect! — but having you ... um ... at arm’s length, I suppose ... that’s been good for Sam and me. You’ll get there one day. Having kids changes who you are. You have to be ‘mother’ or ‘father,’ and that’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day job with no holidays. It’s a wonderful experience — don’t get me wrong! — but ... well, once you started being out for games and tournaments, and then summers, we could date again, and that was ... it’s been really nice.”

She was blushing by the end of that, so I pulled her into a hug and gave her a big smile.

“See? I survived,” I said.

That got her giggling a bit.

“We love both of you,” I said, “We want that for you. Of course, you want to go out on dates with your husband. And, of course, Dad wants to go out with his wife. The two of you have what Jas and I want and what Angie and Paige want. We want to be like you: just as much in love decades later as you were when you got married. Or, maybe, even more. I hope we’ll be where you are one day: a bit sad about letting go, but also happy about rediscovering ‘us.’”

Mom blinked away a few stray tears, and said, “That’s ... that’s what I want for all of you, too! And I give you — all of you! — a lot of credit for seeing it.”

Then she hesitated a bit, flicking her eyes toward the bathroom. After a few seconds, she tugged me off toward the dining room.

I followed, with a guess as to what was on her mind.

Once we were around the corner, she whispered, “It’s not really my place, but...?”

I chuckled, and whispered back, “Assuming you’re asking what I think you’re asking, probably this winter. We’ll take some sort of trip, either just the two of us or where we’re doing part of it as just the couples, and ... then.”

She smiled widely.

“Thank you for sharing that.”

I smiled, and said, “You’re welcome, of course.”

“And ... then...?”

“Probably the summer of 1987. We’d originally thought maybe after graduation, but ... well, why wait?”

She chuckled a bit, nodding, and said, “I waited so long, thinking I wouldn’t find anyone. Then, once Sam ... well, I couldn’t wait to get married! It seems like you have your plans in order, which I’d expect. I can’t wait, but I can, too. I want everything to be just right, and it sounds like you’re thinking the same way.”

“Trying to make something we both completely expect, and have talked about many times, still be a surprise is tricky! But I think we’ll manage.”

“I do, too!” she said.

We headed back into the kitchen. Jas must have gotten back to the bedroom, because she came out fully dressed a few minutes later.

Mom grinned and said, “Well, now I need to start breakfast!”

As I went to give Jas a hug and kiss, two things occurred to me. First, I was nearly certain Mom was convinced we’d fully adhered to her rule about no sex in the house. Second, I was also nearly certain she would excuse it without a question if we stopped adhering to it — but, also, that it still mattered to her. We would stick to it because it felt like the right thing to do for both of us. Something that mattered to Mom mattered to us, too.

Ang and Paige joined us about half an hour later, looking well-rested. Breakfast conversation mostly concerned parts of the trip we hadn’t discussed yesterday.

Mom was even more surprised than I would have expected at the very idea of baked beans as a breakfast food. She asked if we wanted them, and we all agreed we didn’t.