Behemoths and Mach Speed

Our son has been back in New Jersey, where he goes to college, since mid-June. He was home briefly for deep sleep, a little touch of his old life, and a thrilling one-time experience. It was a month just like any other – it moved slowly for the first few days and then just went way too fast.

 

He has an internship at his university this summer and is loving every minute of it. When we talk on the phone on Sundays, I can hear the smile in his voice as he tells me about the past week and snippets of his weekend. He loves what he’s doing, and he loves being “in the City” for the summer. The campus is quieter, but New York is seven minutes away when he gets off work.

 

 

In my time after work and on my vacation, I have continued to make plans for recovering parts of our home that had been dedicated to his upbringing. One of those rooms is one we referred to as “Dakota’s Playroom” when he was a young child and “Dakota’s Sitting Room” when he was in high school. The air hockey table is still in the center of the room, but his desk is near the window where he sat every night for the four years of high school and plowed through homework.

This air hockey table is now doing double duty as the table for LEGO creations left by our young man. The behemoth was carefully covered with a custom cotton sheet to protect the little tiny air holes from becoming clogged with the dust that settles when children move along. A constant and huge reminder of the quickness of childhood and lazy days, it has seen little use for years.

 

 

For the past several weeks, I have been churning over in my head my plans for this room’s next incarnation. It has a fireplace in it that has not seen a flame or log in twenty years. Parental exhaustion and limited time are the culprits. The nightly rushes toward a child’s bedtime did not make for the quiet caring that a fire demands. Peace and quiet and a slightly slower pace have just come back in style around here.

 

 

Last night, I began the reclamation of at least the desk, knowing that, if I can get through that, the rest will fall into place. Its surface has remained strewn with his keepsakes and treasures for the past year. Almost a year ago, I ceased crying every time I walked by this museum of study. These are daily journeys, and the dust got deeper and deeper as I was still unable to really move anything.

 

 

It’s now empty, the desk. Nothing went in the trash can, but all was thoroughly dusted and either placed neatly in the drawers of the desk or taken down the hall to his bedroom and placed on shelves and dresser tops. Tear-free, I moved silently through the task, only stopping occasionally to answer the dog’s questions about particular placement.

Tear-free. Well, for over one hour.

Completely done and turning to change clothes in an adjoining room, I saw the air hockey table and the LEGOs. I had the common sense to not use the cotton rag saturated with Pledge to wipe my eyes.

That’s what trashed out tee shirts are for, and I was handily inside one. They quietly soak up memories of long afternoons of “competitions” between a short young man and his taller mother. During back-to-back games, I worried constantly about him losing teeth as I gently pushed that floating puck towards him. How horrible, I thought, if it jumped that one inch barrier and took out all his front teeth? How will I explain this to every one, especially his father? He won constantly, because he didn’t care how hard he hit it back in my direction. He was looking for mach speed. I was always a little too slow in my reactions to his amazing force.

 

 

The air hockey table and the LEGOs are to be dealt with next. The LEGOs have found a permanent home in my mind’s plans for the room. The air hockey table will be finding a new home outside of these walls.

Damn. Nineteen years flew by. One competition, one night of homework, and one LEGO creation at a time.

 

p.s. All photos in this post were taken in the short time he was home this summer. The one below was captured at the airport when we sent him back East, just minutes before a torrential downpour inside my car. It passed like summer rain, and I quickly dried my face and turned the car toward home.

 

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