I decided to be the Stealth Mommer today. I was so anxious as I drove to Nat’s workplace. But I told myself there was no need to worry, that I would not let him see me. He would not detect a blip in the Shaw’s parking lot forcefield and freak out. And why should he freak out that his mom was shopping there? Well, because it is Nat and me. We are connected by an invisible umbilical cord. That is not meant to infantilize him. It is a statement of fact, that our connection is deep and eternal. I’ve mentioned my plans to haunt him, yes? I do not plan to lie passively in some grave somewhere while he goes on trying to figure out this damned complicated world. Nor will I be a Mombie, chewing up his life. I plan to be a wisp of a presence in his soul, a memory, comforting and guiding him.<\/p>\n
Okay, well, I don’t believe in afterlife, so that probably won’t happen. It sucks that we have to die and leave our kids to grieve and muddle through. Sucks doesn’t even begin to describe it, actually, but I don’t feel like dwelling in my saddest place today. Because I saw Nat at work.<\/p>\n
Anyway… I planned to observe covertly. But soon after going into the store I almost bumped right into him. He was in profile, tall and sure in his navy down jacket (Yay! Warmly dressed!). He did not notice me, and went safely past me with his coworker and coach, pushing carts, smiling, talking to himself. So happy they don’t bug him about stimming. I kept watching him from afar. He went from carts to stacking the baskets, with the use of Amish Baskets<\/a> for this. His coach was right there with him, which surprised me — I thought they were fading back a bit. But I leave that decision to them.<\/p>\n I then ventured closer and closer. I asked a Shaw’s worker if she knew him and she said, “Nate? Your Nate’s mom? Oh, he’s great!” I wanted to hug her. But I smiled and thanked her and left her with her table of sample cake slices. Nat had moved around to the other entrance.<\/p>\n I must confess that I gave in to my hovering mothering tendencies and finally let Nat see me. I stood still, 15 feet away, and removed my sunglasses. Right away he said, “Hi.” but just kept walking. I sheepishly introduced myself to the job coach. We shook hands, and she was smiling so much. She also told me how “He’s so great.”<\/p>\n I worried that Nat would be knocked off balance because I was there. So I said casually, “Nat, I’m shopping because I needed some food for the weekend!”<\/p>\n “Yes.”<\/p>\n “I got you brownies!”<\/p>\n “Yes.”<\/p>\n “I’ll see you soon, tonight, for supper!”<\/p>\n “Yes.”<\/p>\n I went back to my car and drove past them again, an odd trio: tall blond Nat, short round coworker, tall thin smiling coach.<\/p>\n I sighed with happiness over my son. This is called “nachas” in Yiddish (pronounced “nakhahs”). Nachas is a perfect way to end one’s week, seeing a so-called “disabled” young man who is a treasured employee and fellow great guy to them. Plus now I have brownies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I decided to be the Stealth Mommer today. I was so anxious as I drove to Nat’s workplace. But I told myself there was no need to worry, that I would not let him see me. He would not detect a blip in the Shaw’s parking lot forcefield and freak out. And why should he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-10U","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3900"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5540,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions\/5540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}