I have a pretty good sense of when a difficult moment with one of my children has the potential to become an even more difficult situation—a moment multiplied by yelling and stress and punishment. Less predictable is the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, when a positive moment suddenly blooms into a feeling of outsized joy. Like what happened yesterday when I dropped my 12-year-old son off at a birthday party.
As I’ve mentioned in some of my recent weekly dispatches, my son has been living with a lot of stomach pain as of late, but the good news—the reason I can talk about it here—is that it doesn’t appear to be anything dire. The last two days added more evidence to the positive ledger: A colonoscopy and endoscopy that didn’t show anything obviously worrisome, just compliments from our pediatric gastroenterologist on the “excellent clean-out.”
But it’s also been a bedraggling two days of elimination and hunger pains for Adam, with lots of weary exhortations to “hang in there” from me.
We were done at the hospital around 4pm yesterday, and while he could have gone home and easily fallen into an extended nap, he was pining to join his friends who were convening for the birthday party at a Japanese restaurant around 6pm. Just time enough for us to get some nibbles at local diner, for him to go home and change, and for me to take him to the restaurant. He seemed so tired and groggy in the hospital; but his momentum was a lot stronger than his exhaustion.
I drove him to the restaurant, me offering some parental caution about not eating too much, him trained on SnapChat. And just as we arrived a big group of his friends, who had taken the bus there, were also arriving.
They all kind of know about Adam’s situation since he’s missed a bunch of school with all the visits to the doctors’ offices and the ER—and they knew he was out the last two days.
He pops out of the car, barely saying good-bye to me, approaching the crowd with, from what I could see, a mix of eagerness and caution. Happy to be there. Hesitant about how they would respond.
Well, I must say, they responded with a big burst of enthusiasm—hugs, bumps (not the stomach, please), dabs, high-fives. Was it because he was the newest one to join in? Was it because they cared? Because seeing him reminded them that he hasn’t been around and was going through a rough patch? I don’t know.
Instead of driving away, I discreetly drove the car over to the other side of the street, where I could watch him easily and happily assimilate into the throng. This was a boy group, but coincidentally there was also a bunch of girls they knew arriving for a separate party for one of their friends. And to my eye, they also seemed kind of amused and pleased by Adam’s arrival and embrace of his friends.
As his father, I find that I have to play the heavy more than I would like to and more than he would like me to. Even on Monday, in middle of administering to his care and un-feeding, we had a few stressful moments that turned into situations.
But getting to watch him in the world, from the private vantage of my car, was unexpected and extraordinary.
I was so happy for him.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at [email protected]
