One Lucky Duck

Once upon a time...

Vegan Thanksgiving 2016

I remember my kids coming home from school upset about a Pokemon card. One of the boys in Nicks grade had tricked Zak into giving him a rather precious Pokemon card. When Nick found out he confronted the kid and defended his brother. 

Words were exchanged. Nick got the card back for his brother. 

I remember shortly after my now ex husband and I split, standing in the kitchen of our studio apartment making spaghetti. We could hear the couple next door fighting through the walls. The phone rang, one of those old clunky cordless phones, and I picked it up and settled it into the crook of my neck. Zak was only 2, playing by my feet. Nick, age 4 was watching Teletubbies or Barney on a VHS. 

I was tired, I was broke, it was the fourth day of spaghetti dinner. 

I never found out who was on the phone because it slipped out of neck crook and into the boiling water before I could say hello. 

Straw meet the camels back. I swore loud enough to scare my kids. They both stopped and stared at me and I started to cry. I turned off the pot and sat down on the floor and Nick came over, put his arms around me and said 

"It's ok Mom. It will be okay." 4 years old and already trying to take care of me.  Did you know it was possible to be filled with love and broken hearted at the same time? It is. 

So it should come as no surprise that now, at 19 and 21, my boys are still trying to take care of me. Its a funny thing how that works. Sometimes the best way to take care of me is to let me take care of you. I am never more calm than when I am taking care of someone else. It's my jam (oh hot dam..)

They have been pushing me to date and recently they revealed it's because they don't want me to be alone and so they can worry less about me. See? Filled with love/broken hearted. They are not mutually exclusive. 

We had dinner the other night and when they walked inside two of my friends were just leaving. They might not know it but I saw their reactions to my reaction upon seeing my boys. I'm pretty sure I light up because their faces reflected it. (And yes I heard you say 'aw' when Zak hugged me) We talked for an hour or so, about their lives, music, things on the news. I can't tell you how proud I am to have raised two beautiful young men who can have an informed intelligent conversation about the media, sexual harassment and world politics. 

And then they tried to get me to move into the empty apartment in house they live in. Filled with love/broken hearted. 

Zak gave me the sweetest lecture about the make up I wore last weekend to the Mayors Inaugural ball. A friend had done some serious work on my face and he was upset. "You look pretty everyday just being you Mom." 

Credit: Rob Deza

I'm not crying, YOU are crying!

After dinner Zak and I went to the laundromat. He let me teach him a few things about laundry, things I am pretty sure he already knows. But that is how they best take care of me, by letting me take care of them. 

I am one lucky duck.