And I am beside myself.
Alex was the reason I first started blogging. I had been writing about him long before he was even conceived, but I didn’t start publishing my love affair with him until he was 11-months old. I wrote the following that first month, 17 years ago, about being in the bath tub with him and him being startled by me turning on the faucet:
“As a soggy, scared little Alex jumped into my naked lap last night, I vividly remembered that holding him for the first time was the single best moment of my entire life.”
It’s still the best moment of my life. Even 18 years later. The absolute *highlight* of a not uneventful life. Alex made me a mother. More importantly, Alex is the first person I have ever truly *LOVED.*
About a week after he was born, I was upstairs in his bedroom holding him and swaying to love songs when something happened to my body. I will never forget it. A voracious hole somehow opened up in my chest. That’s the best way I can describe it. I wasn’t as in touch with my feelings or my body then, but I still knew it was different and more intense than anything I’d ever felt before. It was joy, yes, but so much all at once that it was physical painful. An ache. A dangerous, dangerous ache. I couldn’t stop sobbing. I knew in that moment I would cease to exist if anything ever happened to him. And I had never felt anything like that before.
Alex was my first true love.
(Genoa was my second.)
(Sean was my 6th and Ever was my 7th.)
I don’t get to write about him much anymore, because he’s been a full grown man for a while now, and I don’t want to violate his privacy, but I’m going to blog about him for a minute like I used to, for old time’s sake…
On Saturday Alex got his driver’s license. He drove me and his baby sister to his 8:30 appointment in Camas, which was literally across the street from the park where he (and his sister) first learned to ride a bike. I figured I’d keep Ever busy at the park while he took his driving test, but after less than ten minutes he huffed back over to us having failed his first attempt. The first turn of the driving test involved a flashing yellow arrow, which turned red on him after he was already in the intersection. Instant fail. Not his fault.
I can’t remember ever seeing him so devastated. It broke my heart. He was on the verge of either tears or breaking something, maybe both. I desperately wanted to hug him, but I knew it would make him cry and that probably wasn’t what he wanted. (In hindsight I definitely should have asked).
They gave him an appointment to retest later on the same day. We practiced driving for the rest of the entire morning and he passed his test with an 88% that afternoon. He’s actually a really good driver. We were both incredibly relieved that he passed on his second attempt. (And the teacher told him that that flashing yellow arrow had failed many a good driver before him).
Covid was not good for Alex. Like me, a social creature by nature, being isolated was devastating. He went through a rough break up with his first love, Mariah, after two years together. It was brutal. He was so depressed he stopped eating and lost FIFTY pounds. FIVE ZERO. I was so worried. I connected him with my therapist, who helped, but they only got so far.
When his junior year was supposed to start online last year, he went the first two weeks without logging in once. I encouraged him to drop out and take the GED instead, which he’s still studying for. We recently had a conversation where I proffered that the only reason he ever went to high school was to see his friends, and he was, like, “MOM. The only reason I went to high school was to SKIP high school.”
Then he got his first job and it changed EVERYTHING. I asked him a week after he started at Wendy’s how his depression was doing and he was, like, it’s GONE. Like mother like son indeed. Work has always been my go-to salve and I wasn’t surprised it was instantly his too.
Fast forward to a couple months later when Sean, who had always been worried about Alex because of how difficult school had been for him, approached me and said, “Alex has done so well with having a job, I think we should buy him a car.” He said “we,” but I had almost zero participation in the entire process. Alex had started asking me about car buying stuff and financing and I was, like, you should totally just talk to Sean about that because I have no clue. Sean is the car guy in our relationship. He’s also the money guy.
So they connected. They spent weeks driving everywhere looking at cars. They took two full-day trips to Seattle to test drive with a baby in the back seat. They ended up finding him a red Hyundai Genesis for a great price and it all worked out. (Alex’s birth father had opted out of materially participating in the process whatsoever. He required a 3.5 grade point average in order to help with a car purchase, and Alex had long since dropped out.) We only wanted to see Alex succeed. He’s working as many hours as Papa Murphy’s will give him and paying us the loan payment for his car now, plus his own insurance (over $700/month), and he is fully motivated and very reliable. Responsibility for things he actually wants comes naturally to him.
I can’t begin to express how proud I am of my boy. Which is a silly thing to call him because he’s 100% a man now. He has been for a while. Part of that has come from the hard knocks my own personal choices have dealt him, but most of it is just his naturally endless resiliency. His fierce independence. His *remarkable* emotional intelligence. Alex might not be much of an academic, but he’s smart as hell. In the eight years we’ve been playing it, I have never once beat him at Cards Against Humanity. He’s a social creature who reads people instantly. He is wise way too far beyond his years.
(He also just got home with a hickey on his neck from a girl he just met on Snapchat.)
(Insert something about apples and trees.)
I have never had to worry about Alex. Whatever life choices he makes, just being himself, just being who he’s been since the day he was born, will bring him success. He’s the most brilliant, reflective man. And I’m not just saying that because he was my first true love.