Little Book of Surprises

“Get those boxes too. The ones by your bed.” I instructed my fourteen-year-old son Caleb. “Make sure they’re tapped all the way up.” I stood at the doorway as I watched him packing away the last of his things. “They’re tapped.” He double checked before standing up to look at me. “You ok ma?” I smiled softly. “I’ll be ok.”

My son knew me inside and out. As much as I had tried to hide the pain that I felt from losing this house in the beginning, I couldn’t hide it from him. He picked up on everything. I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t embarrassed. I felt as if I had failed as not only a mother, but as a woman. Not only had I lost my home, but I had lost my job not too long before that. And not too long before that, I had lost my marriage. Everything around me seemed to be crumbling down. And I still had a fourteen-year-old to take care of in the middle of it all. How in the world was I supposed to be able to do that when I couldn’t even provide the basic necessities that he needed like a place to lay his head at night?

“Don’t worry ma. I’ll be old enough to work soon, I can help you out a lot around here. We’ll get the house back.” I heard Caleb’s voice break through my thoughts as if he had been reading my mind. I smiled softly again, and walked over, sitting on his now stripped bed. “Come sit down for a minute, I want to talk to you.” I requested. I waited until he joined me, sitting down beside me, before I spoke. “Caleb, I want you to listen to me, ok? This is not your problem. This is not your mistake to fix-“

“It’s not your mistake either.” He responded, cutting me off. “It wasn’t your fault that you lost your job. And with dad gone, you’re doing everything on your own, and I see how hard it is on you. Ma, let me help.”

“I don’t want you to help me Caleb.” I frowned a little. “Your job is to be a fourteen-year-old kid, going to school, staying up late with your with friends, playing video games. Not worrying about how you are going to help me keep a house. That’s my job.”

“I love you so much for even wanting to step up and help me. You have a beautiful heart, and I have always told you that. But mommy can handle this. Things may not get better today, and they may not get better tomorrow, but baby, eventually…things will get better.”

We sat in silence for a while, both of us staring at the floor. Finally, he spoke. “So, you don’t want me to do anything?” “Not if it has anything to do with what we just talked about, no.” I reached over, and pulled him towards me, wrapping him up into my embrace. “But I love you.” I reminded him. “I love you so, so much, and I don’t want you to ever forget that.” “I love you too ma,” he mumbled his response to me. We hugged a few moments more, before I kissed him on his forehead, indicating that our mini family meeting was coming to an end.

“Let’s get this stuff in the car. Come on.” I motioned as I got ready to stand up. He followed suit and went over to pick up one of the boxes. “Grandma called you again today.” He said, without bothering to look at me. I already knew what his avoidance of eye contact was about. He knew that nine times out of ten, this particular conversation was about to upset me.

“What did she want?” I asked after a moment, even though I already knew the answer. She’d been trying to fix the strained relationship between the two of us for the last few months. But I just wasn’t trying to hear it. My mother was one of the main reasons that I felt like a failure in my own household. She never passed up an opportunity to rub it in my face of all of the things I hadn’t done right. I could only imagine how much of a field day that she was about to have with this situation.

“She wants you to stop by on the way to aunt Rachel’s. She says she has something to give you.” I chuckled bitterly to myself. “Unless she’s giving us the twenty thousand dollars that we need for this house, I’m not really interested in anything else she has to offer.”

“Mama please. Can you just hear her out?” “Caleb-,” I started, but once again, I was cut off. “Mama, you asked me to let you figure things out on your own without my help, right? Well, YOUR mother is asking for two seconds just to talk to you. She’s been calling everyday for the last three months, and even though you still won’t talk to her, she’s still calling you. If you want me to let you handle everything without my help because you asked me to, you have to talk to grandma because she asked you to.”

I put my hand on my hip, and squinted my eyes, staring at my son. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?” I asked. “Yes.” He responded, holding his ground, while staring me back in mine. We held that stare for a full minute before I broke and finally gave in. I sighed, and bent down, picking up a box. “Fine Caleb. You win. I will talk to your grandmother.” “Today?” he questioned. I rolled my eyes. “Yes Caleb, today. Now, let’s get this stuff into the car.”

An hour, and seemingly a million boxes later, we were on our way to my mom’s. I was dreading the interaction and kicking myself for agreeing to it the whole way. Why did I agree to this? Why? Oh yeah, that’s right, because I wanted to keep my son from the emotional scarring that was done to me by own mother when I was a child. Look at me trying to be a good mother. If only I could have experienced this type of nurturing when I needed it most.

We finally pulled up to her house. I turned the ignition off and sat, while Caleb jumped out to play with her giant dog Diamond who had been laying in the yard before I could barely even stop the car. I had to mentally pump myself up for this. I was already going through so much, that I did not know how I was going to take on anything extra that came from the negative element that only my mother could bring. I did not feel like arguing. I did not feel like fighting. All that I wanted to do was keep this meeting as brief as possible so that I could keep both the promise that I’d made to my son, and my sanity at the same time.

I finally worked enough energy to finally force myself out of the car. “You want me to come with you?” Caleb asked, as I began walking to the house. “No, you stay out here with Diamond, we’re not going to be here long. I’m going to be in and out.” He nodded his head, and I excused myself to handle this. I saw my mother peeking through her living room curtains, and I rolled my eyes all over again. This was going to be a long day.

“Mom?” I called as I walked through the unlocked front door, letting myself in. My mother appeared a few moments later from the kitchen, acting as if she hadn’t known that I’d been there as long as I had. “Oh Janelle, I didn’t even hear you come in.” “Mom, don’t act like you weren’t watching me from your window this whole time.” I responded, already instantly annoyed, and her mood instantly changed. “My goodness Janelle, can you at least try to be even the least bit pleasant?” “Mom, why am I here? I mean, seriously?” I asked. I was over the fake pleasantries. I just wanted to get back on the road to my sister’s and get to where we were going to be calling home until I could figure all of this out. “Why do you hate me so much?” My mother asked, and that was it, I’d had enough. “Oh no, I’m not doing this.” I responded, turning my back to leave. “No, I’m serious Janelle, why do you hate me so much? What have I done to you so badly that you always treat me like this?” “I don’t think you want the answer to that question.”

“No, I think I do.” She responded as I rested my hand on the doorknob. I stopped and dropped my head, trying to fight back tears. I didn’t even understand why they were even threatening to make their way down my face right now. I knew how my mother was. She hadn’t changed in thirty-one years, so why were my emotions all of a sudden acting like they weren’t used to being run through a landmine? I took a deep breath and turned back to face her. “Mom…did you call me over here so that you could throw it in my face that I lost the house?”

My mother actually had the nerve to step back like she was in shock. “Now, why on earth would I do a thing like that Janelle?” “I don’t know mom, maybe because that’s the type of things that you’ve always done to me since I was a little girl. All you have ever done is criticize me and remind me over and over again of all the mistakes that I’ve ever made.”

“Janelle, that’s not true.” “Oh, it’s not? How about when you told me it was my fault that Caleb’s development was delayed when he was a baby? Or you blaming me for my marriage not working out?” “Janelle, I never blamed you for those things. What I said was that baby, you could have done some things better, but you are my daughter, that was just me being a mom, I’ve always wanted the best for you.”

She looked down, and it was only then that I had noticed that she’d been holding a little black notebook in her hands. I guess my anger and anxiety had caused me to miss it. She stared at it for a moment in silence before she looked back at me.

“I do realize that I have made a lot of mistakes when it came to you, and how I’ve handled things in the past. And even though I can’t go back in time to change them…what I can do is work harder to make better decisions in the future.”

She reached forward, and slowly held out the notebook to me.

“Why are you giving me this?” I asked, refusing to take it. Even though I knew that this was clearly her way of apologizing, I was still too stubborn to accept it. “Because I want you to have it. So, take it. Please.” I finally reached up and took it. When I opened it, a check fell out, and slipped to the floor. I slowly bent down to pick it up, and my eyes slowly met hers. It was a check for twenty thousand dollars. “Mama…” “When I heard that you were losing the house, I knew I had to do something. In that notebook are all of the mistakes that I can remember making, and an apology for each and every one of them. I love you Janelle. And I don’t want our relationship to stay this way.”

“I finally allowed the tears to flow freely from my eyes. “I love you too mama. And I’m sorry.”