Dinner out

The year my mom turned sixty, my dad had the bright idea to whisk her off to a dental conference to celebrate.  My mother, who never asks for much of anything, was, to say the least, underwhelmed.  She’d thought he was planning a surprise for the big 6-0; a night in Baltimore wasn’t what she had in mind.  So my brother and I leapt in at the eleventh hour and took her out for a leisurely dinner at a very nice restaurant, just the three of us. My dad got the point pretty fast and to this day I think he still feels a little sheepish, but my brother John and I had staked our claim.  Last night, we carried on the tradition for the thirteenth year in a row.  I think we’re so protective of this annual ritual because it’s the only time that we ever find ourselves in this particular configuration —  my mother and we two grown children. The three of us look forward to this night; look forward to it even more than we can admit to our respective spouses, who, for this one occasion, are not invited.  We love having one another all to ourselves, the chance to chat off-the-record about goings on in the family, the freedom to order whatever we want off the menu, including three separate desserts.  We always have champagne.

As we lifted our glasses last night to my mom’s seventy-third birthday, the three of us agreed that on her seventy-fifth,  we will take our celebration to a nice inn somewhere and stay over night.  Why not?  None of us is getting any younger, and with every passing year the times that we do have to spend together seem even more precious.  My mom made us promise her that when she’s “dead and gone,” as she bluntly put it, the two of us would still get together every year on her birthday, have a good meal, and carry on in her memory.  We laughed, and promised that we would, and hoped we’d get many more years together before anyone is ordering a drink to place in front of an empty chair.

The other morning, a friend came by for tea, and we were talking about how hard it is, at times, to be at peace with the fact that our kids’ childhoods really are over. There’s no rolling back the clock to recapture even a moment of the past; all we can do is pay attention to the present, try not to repeat our old mistakes, love well now, even if we didn’t always, then.  Sometimes, I miss my sons as the little boys they once were so much that it hurts.  For years, we were so close, so tangled up with one another, that everything I thought or did in the course of a day was, in one way or another, all about them.  But Jack turned 17 a couple of weeks ago; next month, Henry will be 20.  They are almost men, busy and preoccupied with lives of their own.  My job now isn’t to shape my days around theirs, but to create a new rhythm for myself, to find a new sense of purpose altogether.  I’m doing that.  Life is busy and interesting and good. I’m getting better at letting go.

But sitting with my brother and my mom last night, I allowed myself to imagine a future in which my own two fully grown sons might insist on having me all to themselves for an evening.  I could see myself climbing into one of their cars, being driven to a restaurant of their choosing, where the three of us would linger over de-caf and dessert, and talk about the grandchildren, and how things are going for them at work and at home.  I have no idea how to make that dream a reality, other than to do what my own mother has done all these years:  Listen well.  Love unconditionally.  Laugh a lot.  Believe in us.

I wonder if it really could be that simple.