Preston the Great

My son just arrived back safely in San Francisco. Air Canada lost his beloved guitar. It has been twenty-two hours since he left and I’m still crying because he’s gone. I left him at noon at the airport in Paris and I started crying as soon as he disappeared up the escalator at Terminal One. I cried on and off during the seven hour drive back home. I broke out in sobs when I walked in the door and he wasn’t here. I’m sobbing now as I write this.

I thought that I would be content when he left, perhaps even slightly pleased. Without Preston around the bathroom door that opens out into the foyer would always be shut. The house would always be as neat as I wanted it to be. I wouldn’t be nagging him to wake up, to mow the lawn, to read a book, to study more in school. He wouldn’t be nagging me about my driving, or the clothes I wear, or my embarrassing comments. I would be free.

But I discover that with him gone I’m just free to cry.

For the past three years, I’ve had a testy relationship with Preston. We always got along great until he was fourteen. That's when I sent him off to school in Toulouse. I simply wanted him to have a better education and the experience of living in Europe. I didn’t send him off to get him away from me. When he did leave, I missed him deeply and telephoned him every day. The following summer, when he decided not to go back, and not to come back to live with me, but to live with his father in Montana, my entire world collapsed. I see now that he wanted to be with his family, not a surrogate French family even though they loved him dearly. I’m sorry that I sent him away when he was fourteen. I thought I was doing what was best for him, but I missed out on that year in his life, and because of it, I missed on having him with me during his high school years.

When he was six, I moved to California from Montana to become an option trader, and being overwhelmed by that undertaking, I sent him back after a month, to live with his father during the school year. I didn’t know what else to do. His father wanted him, and I didn’t have any idea how to trade options and take care of a six-year-old in California where I had no support network of trusted babysitters. I regretted putting him on the plane that took him back to Montana, and was sad every day that he was gone. I was so happy when I got him back the next summer.

Often I look back at that decision with regret for what I missed out on by not being with him when he was that darling six-year-old. But was it so horrible of me? He spent a good year with his father and his paternal grandmother. Because of this year, he is the grandchild that is the closest emotionally to his grandmother.

But now I want that year back.

This spring, Preston surprised me by telling me that he wanted to spend the summer with me. I was flattered. Two months and ten days spent with my eighteen-year-old son. That’s a lot of time to spend with your mother away from your friends and new girlfriend. I was a bit wary, because I didn’t know how we’d get along spending every day together for that long a stretch.

But we did great. He had three friends from his middle school days in San Francisco who showed up for five days. His girlfriend flew out for two weeks. All his visitors were polite and well-behaved. They created more work for me, but I didn’t complain too much. The days went by swiftly, and surprisingly very smoothly. Other than the small nagging bouts that I mentioned, there weren’t any fights or confrontations during his stay.

Still, I thought that when he left on August 12, I would be ready for him to go. When he left, I wouldn’t have someone questioning what I said or did. The house would be neat. The bathroom door in the entry hallway would always be closed as I wanted it to be. His bedroom would be tidy. I wouldn't have as much laundry to wash. There would be no one around to unbalance my perfect little world. I would be the queen in my castle.

But how perfect is a world without love in it? How stupid am I to want to control everything to the point of not wanting anyone around me? I cleaned his room up last night when I returned, and all I wanted as I cleaned was for him to be in it messing it up. I got what I wanted, which was to be able to control everything in the house, and I cannot describe to you how miserable I now am. I want the teenage visitors back. I want my son back. I want my husband back.

Preston has taught me my most important life lessons:

He taught me what unconditional love is. I didn’t understand what love was until he was born. And even now, he’s refining that understanding.

He has taught me that loving someone is not always as easy as we want it to be, especially when the people we love disagree with us. But that accepting that disagreement is an expression of love. And learning from that disagreement is one of the highest forms of intelligence!

He has taught me that I can’t control people or things. And that lack of control is good, because I’m certainly not perfect; and God-forbid that people act the way I act or the way I think they should act for if that were the state of affairs the world would be a dull place. Preston is teaching me to accept people for who they are. He is much more tolerant than I am.

He has taught me how to be humorous. We had so much fun together laughing at each other’s jokes and witty observations and faux pas. He’s much wittier and funnier than I am, and this summer he taught me to see the humor in just about everything that crossed our path.

He and my husband have taught me that real love grows and becomes more intense. But with Preston, that lesson is more poignant because he has transformed more than my husband has in the years that we’ve been together. For it’s incredibly easy to love a baby, or a cute six-year-old. But I would have never guessed that the love I feel for Preston could possibly grow deeper as he became a man. After all, I've always found men rather difficult. How could my love for him grow deeper when he was a teenager breaking away from me? How could it grow when he didn’t dress the way I wanted him to dress any more? How could it expand when he didn’t follow my directives any more? To my amazement, I feel a deeper love and respect for him as an adult than I did when he was a baby. He’s an adult who has different interests and thoughts than me, and initially, that was alienating, but after this summer I enjoy his differences. I don’t view them as threats. I love everything about him.

Well, almost everything about him. He does have some bad habits . . . but he picked them ALL up from ME so I can’t complain. If I did, that would make me a hypocrite.

He was standing at the counter at Charles de Gaulle Airport checking in, they wouldn’t let me go stand with him as I used to do when he was a minor. That was symbolic to me: the airline telling me that I had to let my son go, that I had to let him take responsibility for himself. I was so proud that he was my son. He stood up straight. He was handsome and self-assured and I didn’t fear for him any more. I realized that he’s got a brilliant head on his shoulders and whichever path he takes will be the right one for him. I just wish through my tears that it was a path that had us always walking through the streets of Paris together as we did the past few days and as a favorite photo that my friend Laurie took of us depicts us: eleven-year-old Preston with his blissful Mother walking hand in hand down the Champs-Élysées at night.

Preston didn’t really want to go to Paris for two nights and days. He just wanted me to drive him up to the airport and drop him off, maybe spend one night, and I was going to acquiesce to that wish. After all, it would be easier and less expensive for me, especially if he wasn’t excited about going. But for some reason, I was determined to spend two days up there with him. I don’t know why, I just wanted to do it. At one point, because he didn’t want to go, I thought about just putting him on the train. As you recall, I don’t like being in Paris in August: too hot, too many tourists, and the good shops and restaurants are closed. But I just had this urge to go, and I’m so happy that I followed that urge.

We had such a fun two days. The weather was cool. The city was crawling with tourists, but it didn’t seem worse than any other month. The traffic was light on the Periphique. We were able to find some really good restaurants and that's something that I had never mastered before in Paris. (The good shops were closed though.)

We walked a lot. Preston discovered the creamy deliciousness of real Irish beer. I discovered an “unknown” quartier and we had a great Thai lunch there. We watched a matinee showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 in a little Paris theatre. I slipped on a peach and fell down in the Latin Quarter in front of a café full of diners. Preston helped me up. My knee and foot were bloody from scraping them on the pavement and I had peach smeared all over the back of my skirt. Embarassing as the incident was, I was eternally grateful that I hadn't slipped on dog doo-doo. Preston developed bad blisters later in the day from walking around too long in his Top-Siders with no socks. That evening, the two of us literally limped to the restaurant for dinner. We laughed and joked a lot. I couldn’t have had a better traveling companion . . . even if he did nag constantly about my driving and I found him annoyingly correct.

How lucky am I to be crying because I love my son so much, and miss my husband, and am sitting on a walnut farm in beautiful rural France? And we're all healthy. Damn, I have everything . . .if I could just get us all together in the same place! Nothing's ever perfect enough for me.

Have a loving day.