"Mama. Mama, don't go in there." There's a level of anxiety present in his voice. I feel it in my soul, too, but there is a trajectory in my motion that I don't know how to change. It's like I cannot control my footing or the path this is taking, and in obedience I follow it.
"Mama..." The door between us closes. I don't see his face, but I continue to feel his presence behind the door.
"It'll be okay", I hear my own voice say to him through the closed door...but I know it won't.
I look up and see it clearly now. He looks like the joker. Pale face. High cheekbones. Over-emphasized, rubber smile running across his lips. His hair is gelled-up in its haphazard manner. His clothing matches his hair. He puts his glass of beer down and pulls something out of his jacket pocket. I see it's some sort of small knife disguised as a pen. A joker pen.
"Jet, call 911...." I say calmly. Even though I know my son is behind the door and I cannot see his face, I know he can hear us and that he knows what is taking place. I'm glad he is behind the door. I don't want him to see what's about to happen to me. I continue to look at his joker face in front of me, his joker smile. His eyes looking into mine.
"Mama...Mama..." I hear more anxiety now in the tone coming through the door.
"Jet, honey. 911 now..."
He never says a word. He pricks my foot with the joker pen. My foot is bleeding. I feel sleepy. Everything starts to fade as he stares into my eyes, his big plastic smile is the last thing I see.
"Mama....Mama..."
"Jet, honey. I love you...be safe. Take care of your sister.."
I wake up, throwing myself out of my slumber to a straight upright position in bed. My heart is throbbing in my ears. My hair is wet from my sweat, as I feel the constant breeze from the bedroom fan on my face. I'm breathing just as fast as my heart is beating as my eyes adjust to see the tranquility of the peaceful night surrounding me. My slippers are on the floor beside the bed. Everything is still, everything is calm. There's a soft darkness blanketed over the room. The windows glow with moonlight. I realize it was just another dream, my third since we've been in this house. I adjust my position so I sit on the side of the bed, my feet touching the floor as I allow my breathing to soften. I don't let the dream go, not yet. I sit with it awhile. I let it sink into me. Like being completely safe in a frightening roller coaster, I realize that I can sit with these thoughts without them hurting me. They cannot get me here.
I wonder if the dream was an alternate reality that would've happened if different choices had been made, or maybe it is just some old fear coming back to remind me. Maybe it wasn't about me. Maybe the joker was just another piece of a puzzle in the portrait of my son. I let my thoughts drift to him...my 13 year old son who is downstairs sleeping peacefully in his bed, and will soon arise to go off to his 7th grade class. My eyes close. I lay back down. I feel the energy of the person I share the bed with. I touch his naked back, and I feel his heartbeat pulsating against my hand. I feel his warmth, his kindness, his protection flowing through his skin and filling up the room. I think about how our home is pulsating with this warmth, how our children fill up with it...how they drink it in here inside our home, then take it out with them as they walk about their day, so full of warmth that it oozes out of them. I think about how grateful I am that my son can just be a 13 year old, and no longer has to be the one to call 911. There is a man in the house who provides that protection...a man who is a man so that my 13 year old son doesn't have to be...he can take his time and become the man that he's meant to be, not some haphazard joker.
A few years ago, I shared a collective moment when a different man offered his story. He said that he had spent his childhood raising his kid sister while his single mom worked 3 jobs. He did whatever it took, often working odd jobs to pay for food while still providing safety and protection for his sister. When he went off to Marine Corps Boot Camp, it was a welcome respite. He no longer had to worry about juggling jobs. He just had to do the one job...to become a Marine. He could send his checks home, his mother could quit her additional work and just be a mom to his sister. This same man said that now...years later...his own teenage son had multiple high school male friends who would come around and congregate in his home. He could feel them yearning to be taught how to become a man, how their cloaked questions between bites of cereal in his kitchen on Saturday mornings were really gentle requests. They wanted so badly to navigate the road, and knew they were in the presence of a worthy guide. That, he said, was the cost of finding the way...to teach others who want to learn.
There are times I look at my 13 year old son, and it washes over me that I'm standing in the presence of greatness. I get frustrated when he doesn't listen. I punish when he doesn't complete his chores or if he comes home with grades that are beneath him. I check him when he oversteps his boundaries, which he does quite often...but I know that lessons he's learned are difficult to unlearn, and asking him to just be a kid after being forced for years to step up like a man must be difficult. I look at him, and I know he is far greater than anything I could create with my own hands, and I cannot take credit. Like a farmer adding nitrogen and aerating soil, my contribution is limited. I didn't design the seed, I just planted it. I simply offer my few resources, and watch in awe while the sunlight and rainfall do their jobs. I tend to the weeds, plucking anything away that threatens the homeostatic environment. I stand back at the majestic unfolding before me shooting away from the ground and up towards the sky as he grows more and more into the man he's meant to become.
And I regret nothing.
I do not regret that he only nursed five months, and I gave up so quickly in frustration. I do not regret bringing him home from the hospital to a three-room apartment in the blankets I stole from the hospital. I do not regret the cross-country move where he spent five days in a carseat while my father drove a squeaky U-Haul carrying all my personal belongings from Utah to Houston, surviving a break-in at the hotel in Albuquerque. I do not regret the marriage, or the divorce, or the heartbreak that he must have felt when he couldn't wish his own father a happy birthday one November. I don't even regret that 911 call he had to make at age 9. Even though my heart breaks to a million pieces every time I think of all of these things...my heart breaks and the tears fall, yet I regret nothing. Such a contradiction.
There are lessons that only the darkness can teach us. While the moon is present during daylight, it takes the night time for us to appreciate it, to search it out...to look for the moonlight which cannot shine during the daytime. We become resourceful, or we don't survive and the joker gets us with his pen. So it is with him...I want him to grow in his own way, the way that the seed and the soil and the sun design him to go. The way that the guide shows him, the guides of his own choosing. As I am neither the builder, nor the architect, I know that his natural direction has very little to do with me. Yet, I know he cannot grow without the right balance of everything....soil, sunlight, and rain. That means that while I do not create nor force the rain, I must also not try to be his umbrella. I could spend my life wishing that some of those awful, heartbreaking moments didn't happen, but what if they actually contributed to the man he's becoming? What if they were what was needed for him to yearn enough to search for the road...to seek out the worthy guide...to ask the right questions to the teachers that have been placed in his path. Teachers he found in the darkness, like moonlight.
I hope he becomes the kind of man who pulses with warmth and protection. I hope his own children fill up so much with it that they ooze, that their friends come over to congregate because they follow the good energy. I hope that one Saturday he finds himself with a bunch of his son's friends around the kitchen table asking cloaked questions...searching out his guidance the way a sapling reaches for the sun. And, I hope he realizes that the cost of finding his way is to teach others... those who've decided they want to navigate the road and are in the presence of a worthy guide.