I find motherhood to be very repetitious.
As in; you repeat the same things over and over again:

• Did you brush your teeth?
• Say thank you.
• Don’t touch that.
• Close the door.

I know you know exactly what I mean.

Our ongoing “issues” with Garin were fairly repetitive as well. The same things that caused problems years ago, were still bones of contention. Nothing got solved, it just morphed.

Like we fought over the garbage for 7 years.

I am specifically describing one chore when I say the garbage: on Sunday evenings, the weekly garbage goes out for Monday morning pickup. Garin was expected to go about the house and make sure that all pails were empty and they had new bags if necessary. Kitchen, office, both bathrooms, and my room. Occasionally, I asked him to look at the kids pails and take care of his own. Scooping the cat boxes have been part of the job description for years. Then, all the house garbage goes out, you put out the pails from the week and you reorganize the recycling to keep the garbage men happy. Bonus points if you bring in the empty pails the next morning. On a bad week, doing it well might take 25 minutes, but usually, it was a fifteen minute job.

He just refused to get it right ever. It got more and more specific as he acted like he needed such direction.

“You have to do garbage on Sunday before you go out for the day, and before you go to work. You can’t do it at 10 o’clock at night or you wake the kids, please put bags in upstairs, please can you just do the garbage?”

I can say that in the entire 7 years that kid has been in charge of putting out the garbage, I can count on my two hands the times when it was done on time, was done completely, no one had to beg or demand to get it done, he actually remembered on his own, and it was not a frustrating experience for me.

It’s not brain surgery here, folks. It’s putting out the freaking garbage. He just seemed to choose not to care about it at all. He couldn’t put in the effort to care even the littlest bit. There was always some excuse, that should have been acceptable, and he could never quite get that we really had a right to be mad.

I remember one time, not too long ago, fighting with Garin over “would he please do the garbage now at 7:30 before he goes out with his friends, and not at 12:30 pm when he gets homes, if he even would remember then”, and he was really put out because he had to go RIGHT NOW because PEOPLE WERE WAITING..and there would be no grasping of “but you slept til 2 even though we tried to wake you and then sat around and you KNEW it was Sunday, and if you were planning to go, just do this first”. And part of his argument t was “why was I making such a big deal about WHEN he would do the garbage, as it took only two minutes and was not a big deal”

And if it only took two minutes, then WHY the hell are we fighting over it.. just DO IT. DO it because I AM YOUR MOTHER!

And you know, it hurts that he would rather stand his ground rather than give in.

We really didn’t demand very much. I mean, there is NO WAY, and I mean NO WAY, that we were crazy or unrealistically demanding.

Go to school. Get there on time. Do your work. Don’t get in trouble. Get decent grades. Have a job. Help out around the house. Have dinner here sometimes. Don’t be home too late. We need to know when people are here and no, not when no one is home unless we have previously discussed it. Don’t take what is not yours. Don’t be mean to your brother and sister. Always use a condom. Be nice. Don’t be a dick. Don’t fight.

Really, nothing out of the ordinary. And he wasn’t expected to be perfect, but hey, I’m still a parent. And yeah, you’re gonna screw up and yeah, there are consequence of your actions.

So when the math teacher calls last June and says that she knows he probably thinks it’s OK because they are just reviewing for the final and he thinks he’s all ready, but he needs to know that he just can’t skip the past 8 classes, and she doesn’t want to get him in trouble, but..come on.

Well, as a mother, I might just feel a little bit annoyed at my child’s behavior. And when, really, he is actually quite smug about his decision and accuses the teacher of being stupid, and him refusing to “waste his time reviewing”, well, it’s really annoying. And so, yeah, at a pissed off mother I can say to my misbehaving teen; “yeah well you can now plan on staying in today!”.

He was out of control. Once I tried to tell him that he had to stay in that day as a consequence to his poor choice to cut classes, he flipped. Nope, there was just no way he was going to do what we said. He was out of here. This was bullshit. We just needed to leave him alone. He was going to move out. That’s it. Fuck you, fuck her, fuck math.

That was the day that turned into “Garin going to his father’s for the summer”. It wasn’t, of course, as quick and clean as all that. It took hours. All day actually. Us begging him to calm down and get a grip, explaining again and again, how really.. we had a right to be pissed off about him cutting 8 classes. And that turned into explaining to him that he could not, at 16, just move out and we would be OK with it.He clung that he did no wrong..we were just all crazy. Calls to his father, back and forth. Tension, Tears. Yelling. Bleh. In the end, he went to see his uncle in NY for a few days. Then he came back to his fathers.

There was a week in between the initial blow up and the “talk” that I had with my ex husband. Unfortunately, this was the day that Rye decided that it would be a good idea to say ” I’m going to the Bank” at 11:30 am and then go missing in action for the next 10 hours. Granted he was only waiting to get a hair cut, hanging out with Murry, and general nothing at all, but after 4 hours of wondering “where the hell is he?” it gets old.

Then at 5 hours MIA current husband, you have the conversation with your ex-husband, and while logically you KNOW that this is probably the best thing, and Garin needs some attention from his father, and Pat actually might be able to be more stern with him and pull in the reins, and lord knows we need a break, and maybe Garin will realize that we didn’t demand too much and appreciate what he has here, and …sigh…as you both decide that yes, your unruly teen will be moving to his fathers for the summer…the logic just does not matter..and all my heart is screaming “My baby is GONE. I’m losing my baby. Garin is GONE!

I get through the day somehow, but after many conversations trying to explain to my now somewhat inebriated current husband that the situations is dire and really, just come home I am NOT OK, when he finally does.. I am the puddle on the kitchen floor.

Well, it wasn’t the kitchen floor, it was the living room in the dark, hiding, on the couch, and shaking uncontrollably, trying to keep down the wailing sounds that wanted to spring forth from the depths of my soul. It was, for me, the single most adoption triggering instance to date. Full on, living in the moment, ripped from my arms, mother howls of loss.

I was in the middle of writing the “Birth mothers and Grief series” inspired from SEO. And suddenly, I was back into the firestorm.

And I had to completely disassociate, emotionally and mentally pull back from adoption, force some form of secondary denial because I just had to. Everything was too close to the surface, I was all churned up again, and I had to settle down inside. I had to focus on just living. Not what I coulda, woulda, shoulda; for Max, for Garin. Not what’s gonna happen next. Not how do I feel. I had to not feel for a while. I just had to be.

And I was quiet.