A Little Bit of Heartache

By Linda C. Wisniewski 

PROMPT — Despite ...

Despite long years of heartache, my boy and I are good.

He left his shampoo on the rim of my bathtub. It means he’s coming back, that he wants to come back. It’s been a few days since he left, but I haven’t changed the sheets he slept on. I will, but what’s the rush? If I press my nose against the pillow, I can smell his hair.

He’s 32 now. How did that happen? Last weekend, he came home for a short visit. He’s been living in Manhattan for ten years, but I still want our house to be the place he thinks of as home.

Soon after he moved to the city, I met him for lunch. I was in town for a conference, a great excuse. Any conference in Manhattan is an opportunity to see him. At the end of the day, the leader of our group asked everyone to say why they were awesome (It was a women’s conference, and we like to cheer ourselves on). I said I was awesome, because I let my son walk away from me after lunch, even though I wanted to wrap my arms around his ankles. It got a big laugh.

When we dropped him off at college, I cried when he was out of sight, not wanting to make him feel bad. I smiled and said I was happy for him, for all the new opportunities he would have. I hid my grief. I kept inside all those things I still needed to say. What if I forgot to teach him something important? It was too late now. Heartache planted itself deep in my core, and I struggled for months afterward to live in our home with his empty room down the hall.

Always a quiet, serious kid, he had grown increasingly distant in high school and eventually became quite sullen. He spoke not a single unnecessary word at breakfast or in the car when I dropped him and a neighbor’s child at school. He didn’t talk to her either. Why was he like this? My brain filled with words to break the silence, ideas to try, jokes to tell…and blame to assign. True, his father was a quiet man, but this was extreme. One awful morning, as I probed him with questions, he said he couldn’t stand me. I was the speechless one then, my heart aching.

His first summer home after freshman year, he bounded from the car to his room and stayed there until dinner, posting on Facebook that he was not happy to be home. This must be my fault for yelling at him when he was little, I thought, and I wallowed in guilt. I pestered him with questions at dinner, desperate for the key that would open up his life to me. On better days, I reminded myself I had also been loving and supportive. He wasn’t into drugs or alcohol or in any trouble with the law. So, what if my boy and his dad were quiet, and I was super emotional? That’s all it was: our differences in a peanut shell.

They say that patience is its own reward. He talks to me now. Not a lot, but enough to ease my sense of loss. Sometimes he says, “love you!” if I say it first. He smiles, gives me sidearm hugs, and texts “I’ll be there,” when I send an invitation. Somehow, without me, he’s gained a sense of himself.

Our phone calls are usually about a serious girlfriend (there have been three so far). With each one, I hope they get married and have kids. And visit me. Then I can smell their pillows too, inhaling joy.

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Linda C. Wisniewski is a former librarian and journalist living in Bucks County, PA, where she volunteers at the historic home of author Pearl S. Buck. She teaches memoir writing online and has published a memoir, a time travel novel, and an essay collection.