Susan Senator

Knowing many, loving none

Bearing sorrow, having fun

But back home he’ll always run. — Greg Allman, “Melissa”

Your child is always your child; that is true. But when your child is no longer a child, things change. We all know that. But do we?

I was riding my bike today, a glorious ride, so happy, warm, just right.  Well, that song came on: Melissa. I’ve kept it on the shuffle because it had ceased to make me cry. It’s just a pretty song, with a little bit of great Duane Allman guitar in it. But as I rounded that corner and spilled down that gentle hill, those words got in. And just like that, my ride shifted into thunderheads. I actually had to stop, and hide next to some tall shrubs, and cry.

It was the part about knowing many, loving none. My mind jumped to Nat, standing off to the side, watching everyone the way he does. He stands there, thin and big-eyed, taking it all in. Now, I’m not saying that the song is literally true: knowing many, loving none. I know that Nat loves people, me in particular. But the thought that popped into my head was that Nat doesn’t love anyone — in the physical sense. Sexual, adult love.

Is this inappropriate for me, his mother, to be thinking about? God damnit, I don’t care. I want Nat to have as full a life as he wants. If we are to presume competence, we must also presume whole humanness. How dare we assume that it’s not there, just because it is kept quietly within?

It is very likely that Nat wants some kind of love, that even without knowing the words or the why’s, he probably wants some kind of sex. And that’s when it crystallized: Nat is a man. Nat is a full grown man.

And yet we, many of us, call him “Natty Boy,” and say, “Good Boy,” to him, and many of us treat him more like a teen, with the high-five kind of stuff, the “buddy,” kind of talk. But how does he feel inside, knowing he is a man? Does he feel discouraged, day in and day out, knowing he is not seen that way? Even if it is just on a feeling, not a verbal, level, how must that feel to him, to be so trivialized?

Nat is a man, like Max is a man. Like Ned is a man. Nat stands off to the side, sucking his thumb, eyes wide and blue like a Disney elf. His language, his words are young, childlike. He refers to himself as “Nat,” and “you.” These errors are poignant, and cute. Why is it cute? Because he sounds like a little boy when he talks. And he  has a slight build. He still has those lovely, innocent features not hardened by cynicism or subtlety, so he can still look a lot younger than he is.

And he was my baby. I look at my sons and in a flash their baby selves are super-imposed on their delicate newly adult faces, a double exposure in my mind. As their mother I am especially prone to remembering their younger selves and connecting them to their current selves, and feeling all proud and moved and tender.

But I am so careful with Max, and now Ben. I can tell what I’m supposed to keep to myself, and what I can express. Sometimes I overstep with Benj because he’s only 13 and there is still so much of the dear boy in him, the moody passionate tween, the “angry babby,” as the Scottish painter called him years ago. With Max, though, I feel like I can only dole out the hugs because he projects a certain distance. His eyes hide more than they reveal, even though they are still curly and twinkly like when he was a tot.

So I knew I had to get home and do something about what I’d discovered. I tried to stop crying and got back on my bike, thinking how glad I was that Ned is back home from California. But I really wanted to talk to Landon, because he often talks about being an autistic son, and what that has meant to him. He has a keen sense of parenting, even though he doesn’t have children.

I heard back from him almost immediately. “Be gentle with yourself,” he said. He did not offer advice on how I can be different in the future, except to say that Nat indeed is a man, albeit one who needs to be protected and who sucks his thumb.

And then Landon sent me this:

And I just wanted to share it with as many people I can, because it is unfortunately easy to forget.