Mother and son, 40 years later
January 1975: It seems like such a long time, and yet just a heartbeat ago since the boy became a man
And so, it has come to this. The son is 40. Today. How is this possible? Where did the years go? When, how, did the baby become the boy who became the man?
January 1975. Wasn’t that just a heartbeat ago?
This is how things are, of course, when you reach a stage in life where milestones are less about reviewing accomplishments and more about signposts that invite introspection.
Family birthdays, especially, are startling reminders of how time is the thief of days, pausing only briefly to remind us that its job is to march relentlessly on.
The son was born when the mother was young, at least when compared to these times of deferred motherhood, turning 22 just a week after his birth. The father and mother didn’t marry until seven months later, which was quaintly scandalous back then but much the norm today, and the wedding was on a smouldering Fourth of July afternoon, a prescient omen for a fiery union.
The son will talk of memories that include a somewhat unsettled youth, and he is not wrong, for he and his mother were on their own for much of it and moved around a fair bit, living for a time in Vancouver, then Burnaby and then Surrey, before settling in New Westminster, where they would stay.
But he will also speak of a splendid time as a boy, the years when he waded creeks and explored fields with his band of rag-tag mop-topped friends, staying out the day long, until dark, because Twitter and Facebook, Instagram and Grand Theft Auto had yet to launch their all-consuming isolationist cultural invasion.
He will remember the little house with the attic bedroom where he couldn’t stand up straight, for he grew so fast, but he could holler out the skylight to his friends on the sidewalk below.
He will talk, too, of the day he got his first good bike, a coveted Kuwahara, and of the time when his running shoes, the Kangaroos that came before the Air Jordans, were in such bad shape they had to be repaired with duct tape.
He will remember not being allowed to drink Coke, a
The mother doesn’t even remember what life was like before he was born, can’t imagine what her world would have been like without him as the years slipped by.
deprivation imposed by the mother, but will have forgotten when he chugged the dregs of a bottle of homemade wine that was too near his playpen when he was two, child-rearing being a somewhat looser undertaking in the 1970s.
He will recall, too, the time he climbed into the big dumpster in the parking lot of his grandmother’s apartment block, falling right in with the maggots and stink, and how happy he was when his grandfather pulled him out before the garbage truck arrived and shipped him off to the landfill.
He was then, and is now, much like his late father, sweettempered and strong-willed, tall and handsome and gifted with the gab, and drawn to the chemistry that is cooking, so much so that a few years ago, his wife and mother had a Wolf gas range delivered to his door, a Christmas gift in the midst of a house renovation.
With the mother, he shares curiosity, a need to know what’s going on around him and to talk about it, but he also bears a temperament that seeks contemplation and quietude.
They have, as happens when one is blessed, become good friends, mother and son, falling into easy conversation about movies and politics and the downfall of the human race and where the best sushi and authentic Mexican can be found.
Sometimes they don’t agree, like when the mother hangs pictures without a level. And because he is a methodical thinker, he cannot comprehend her lack of skill in assembling anything from Ikea, and he is always astonished by her blissful technological ineptitude.
He more than likely wishes the mother would stop writing about him in the newspaper, but is surely grateful that she doesn’t publish the really cute pictures taken when he was a baby in the bathtub.
What he won’t know is that the mother doesn’t even remember what life was like before he was born, can’t imagine what her world would have been like without him as the years slipped by, because it’s as if she was just waiting for him, and his sister 10 years later, to come along to make it perfectly clear to her just what her purpose is.
The mother is proud that the son is a now a fine father, raising a son of his own, a son so much like him, a smart skateboarding boy with a thatch of thick hair, a mischievous spark and a sassy wit who has transformed the mother into a grandmother, creating for her an even more profound sense of purpose and pride.
Forty years. Seems a lot for the son, though it will never be enough for the mother.
Happy Birthday, Ryan. Love you forever.
Now come and get your stuff out of my basement.