Bear goes to Boston......

"Can I go to Boston?" read the text I received yesterday at 2:45 pm in the middle of my Culinary Arts Class.

Wow, I hoped thought, wrong number.

I once before got a wrong number text.

(Googie told me not to respond, that people screw around with people like that.)

Then my work phone rang.

"Did you get my text?" Bear (my just turned 19 yr old son) asked.

"You want to go to Boston?" I asked

"Boston, as in the state Boston? (my very intelligent co-workers glanced at me kind of funny when I said that..forcing me to clarify..)

"I mean, as in Massachusetts.... You want to go to Boston, Massachusetts????"

Have you been sniffing glue?

"Seriously....you want to go to Boston?"

He gave me the details and I told him I'd call his dad and call him right back.

"He never asked to go on any Girls Gone Totally Wild sex/tattoo/multiple body piercing a thon Spring Break trip" I reminded Daddio.

"And he's never been in one bit of trouble"

What the hell was I doing here??? I was talking Daddio into agreeing to let Bear leave the country.

Fly to the moon.

Be swallowed up by a tesseract...a sort of "wrinkle in time" in space and time, a fifth dimension.

"I will need every one of their full names (including any alias's), phone numbers, addresses, MySpace, Facebook and any YouTube account info" I told Bear about his travel companions.

"I want parent's names too"... (a quick credit check couldn't hurt).

When everyone checked out okay and Bear got the go ahead it was a mad dash to get packed, secure some flow (that will probably be stolen when he is robbed and raped in some filthy germ infested rest stop along the way) and do all the things one does when leaving out of town.

"We don't have a small tube of toothpaste MOMMMMMMMMMMMM" Bear screamed into the phone, it was the 27th call he made to me at work, in the 45 minutes he had to get ready to leave.

This trip on the fly was starting to grate on my nerves.

"I don't know if I want to go" Bear said on call number 29.

And again with call number 32.

"FLIP A FREAKIN ASS COIN AND DO WHATEVER THE FRICK IT TELLS YOU TO DO OKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKAY?" I yelled, when he called again to tell me he wasn't sure.

A second later when a screwdriver stabbed me in the heart (be nice to him you idiot, if you let him go and God forbid something happens.....) I got control of myself....

"Sweeeetheart" I purred "this is an adventure. You are going to have a blast. Make a decision, figure that there are going to be pros and cons, just like every other decision you are ever gonna make. Once you make a decision you will feel better. Just make one, make up your mind and go with whatever it is that you decide. Have some confidence in yourself. GO or DON'T GO, decide. Now, are you going to Boston or not?"

"I don't know" Bear said "should I?"

For cryinoutloud ........

OF COURSE YOU SHOULD NOT GO....an accident could happen, you guys could get so lost that you'd never make it back.

Boston is far kid, really really far.

(One step closer out the door you go.)

I'll miss you Bear, be safe and hurry home.

And don't forget, hide your money in your sock....

(I will age 20 years this weekend...... guaranteed)

Waiting to exhale.....

It's 9:30 in the evening and I'm sitting in my computer chair typing this post because there is no way I can do anything else.

I'm waiting.

On pins and needles.

I have a pit the size of a basketball resting heavily on my diaphragm making it hard to breathe.

It all started with a phone call to our landline a bit ago. I didn't answer because I didn't recognize the number.

A couple of minutes later Daddio walked upstairs with my cell phone. Bear had just called.

He was calling to tell us that he was on the way to the hospital, his best friend since the first grade had been injured in a car accident.

With hands shaking so badly it was hard to hold the phone, I called Bear back.

"How bad?" I asked.

"His parents didn't know how bad mom" he answered. "They called me and weren't to the hospital yet."

Then he just about broke my heart when he asked "If he was dead mom would the hospital keep that from his parents till they could make it to the hospital?

I don't know. Do they do that? I didn't think they did that? Please tell me they don't do that.

"No, honey he's going to be fine" I said.

Suddenly I was scared for my own child.

Scared because he's driving and upset.

Scared about what he may find when he gets to the hospital.

Scared to think about how his life could change because his best friend got into a car accident.

Then I thought about his friend's mother.

And I thought about my own mother who lost her son to an accident one seemingly ordinary mid October evening.

And I thought about Bear and his friend's graduation ceremony tomorrow night.

These two boys who became fast best friends when they met in the school supply aisle at K-Mart the first day of first grade.

Bear and Metzie were in the same class and became a perfectly matched inseparable pair.

They would be best friends all their growing up years.

They planned to walk together to get their diplomas.

And now Bear was on his way to the hospital where Metzie was taken after the accident.

A couple of hours and lots of text messages later Bear called one last time to say he was on his way home.

"Anybody want any MickyD's?" he asked when he called.

"Bring your dad a big mac" I said.

"Nothin for you ma?" He asked.

"Yeah" I wanted to add.....go to the store Bear and get some party hats and some balloons. Stop by the church and kneel and say a prayer of thanks. Lets make a cake. And throw confetti. And blow kazoos. And bubbles. Lets dance a jig and sing some songs.

"No kid, just hurry home" I said "and be careful".

Bear's best friend is going to be fine.

Life goes on as planned.

Halleluiah, Hallehuiah......

* 22 hours later I had the pleasure of watching Bear and Metzie walk side by side during their high school graduation ceremony. Metzie just a bit worse for the wear.

What was that?

I scamper over sleeping Daddio and a smothering pile of sheets and blankets like a Jesus lizard running on water.


Seriously, I took about three giant leaps, flew up off the bed and onto the floor in seconds flat.


Then I stopped dead in my tracks.


Did I just hear what I thought I heard?


I stood silent and waited.


I cocked my head toward the sound.


My eyes scanned the clock.... 2:03 am


Then the sound came again.


The phone!!!


"THE PHONE IS RINGING AND IT IS TWO O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING"... I screeched at Daddio.


See, the thing is, I have a BIG problem with answering a phone that rings in the middle of the night...it may have something to do with the fact that I got the news of my brother's fatal accident by phone. That call came on a Sunday night around nine or nine-thirty.


For a long time I couldn't and wouldn't answer the phone on Sundays.


Phone calls after 9 pm usually bring nothing but trouble...unless you're expecting a baby in the immediate family, which we aren't.


As quickly as I was scaling Daddio and the mountains of covers I was doing a mental tally of where my children should be.


In bed.


In bed.


In bed.

All the commotion had Daddio out of bed as well and in the split seconds it took for me to locate the ringing phone he had thrown back the blinds of our bedroom window to see if the kid's cars were where they should be too.


Reaching the phone, which had just stopped ringing , I ordered my eyes to focus and my fingers to find the TALK button.


I fumbled for the call log button.....WHO was calling in the middle of the night??????


Before I looked down to see WHO.... I remembered.


BEAR....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Bear and his friends had gone to see a midnight flick (yeah, I know it was a school night..and your point is???)


The opening night for the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street.


"Hello? Hello? Hello" I cried into the phone.


Nothing. Dead silence.


My fingers, on auto pilot, dialed Bear's number.


"Ma" he answered, his voice a whisper,

 "Can you come open the door? Googie locked the deadbolt".


When Bear stepped in the door I kissed and hugged him like he was returning from War.


"I can't take much more of this" Daddio said when I crawled over him to get back to my spot in our bed.


"People like us shouldn't have children".


Silently I thanked the Lord for safe children, the man sleeping next to me, and our strong aortas.


Aortas that have really been put to the test these past twenty four years that we've been parents.


I went to sleep thinking of home defibrillators.

My son...the incidental hero.

"Mom" he whispered, touching my cheek.

Nothing and I mean nothing moves me faster than a kid, inches from my sleeping face in the middle of the night whispering "mom".

"Something happened" he said

"What? What? What happened? What's wrong? Is it something bad? What happened" I asked as I jumped out of bed. Noticing the clock said midnight.

"I just saved somebody's life" he whispered.

Daddio began to stir and wonder aloud why in the hell we were carrying on a conversation whilst he was trying to get a bit o shut eye.

"He wants to tell me something, I'll be right back" I told him.

I followed my big man child into his sister's room, where she sat in her bed, waiting for us.

"I told him to wake you up" she said.

His story begins at the railroad tracks near our home. On the way home from his girlfriend's house he was stopped by a long train. A nightly occurrence on this road. The tracks lead to a train yard on one side of this intersection. Trains go back and forth between three different tracks. It's common to see them unhook some of the cars and then send them up a different track to meet and connect with a different train.

As my son waited, he watched as the two trains' separated and jockeyed around. As the perviously neighboring cars were about to connect to each other my son saw a man on a bike become tired of waiting and begin to cross in-between the two railroad cars.

"He just made it to the middle mom" my son said "when one train sped up to connect with the other. The guy's tire stuck in the track and he fell off the bike. I watched as the train grabbed his bike and bent it in half. I got out of my car and ran and pulled him off the tracks".

Did you ever see someone laugh and cry at the same time?

My heart split into two totally separate parts.

"Oh my GOD...YOU SAVED A LIFE"....proud mother of a real live hero exclaims.

"Oh my GOD...YOU WERE ON THE RAILROAD TRACKS WITH A TRAIN"...hysterical mother of a kid who challenged a train screeches.

"Right when I got him off, the trains connected, and then they cleared the tracks" he explained.

"He was all bloody, his mouth was cut and his finger was bleeding and looked broken" he said

My son went on to tell us that the man thanked him and said "bless you young man". He then left his bent, broken bike and started walking".

"I picked him up and took him home mom" my hero said. "He was hurt and it was cold".

My heart's split personality was at it again.

GOOD BOY, I thought. You listened when I said to be kind and giving.

YOU IDIOT, I thought. Didn't you hear a word I said about strangers and dangers?

He tells a good story and we couldn't help but laugh when he got to the part of the stranger being in his car "yeah ma, the minute the door closed and we started on our way, that short ride turned into one of the longest of my life while every scary movie I ever watched replayed in my head. You know where the dumb teenage kid lets the murderer into his car?"

"He was high or drunk, wasn't he" I asked

"Yeah" he said "I could smell booze".

It took me hours to get back to sleep. I wrestled my conflicted confused heart all night. My son is a hero. My son could have been hit by a train. My son is kind and generous. My son could have been a statistic.

Finally I came to a conclusion....my son is a hero.

God handles the rest.