Seed Book

I just put Boogsie to bed. He is five now. A more or less autonomous being. He sometimes calls me Mrs. Gunter (his preK teacher) or Daddy by mistake. He has friends, favorite movies and tv shows, ideas about God and enough of a sense of direction to call me out when I’m lost. He has a “brother” now, his Dad’s girlfriend’s son, and a new sister on the way. He called the girlfriend (Holly) his “other mother “one day recently.

I am also an autonomous being. I have my knitting, bellydance, school, a boyfriend that he doesn’t know about. Many evenings are spent with me at the computer in my bedroom writing, writing, always writing and him in front of the tv. I wonder if this means there’s something wrong with us. He told me it’s more fun at Holly’s house because the bike he has over there goes faster than the one he has here. I wonder if what he means is that over there he has a family and can be a kid.

Here he has an introverted space cadet mom who kind of treats him like a roommate. Like, “dammit, Boogsie, you peed on the toilet seat. Again!” Over here it’s him and me doing our separate things. Quietly. Calmly. On a schedule. For better or worse. Boogsie’s the man of the house. He checks the doors at night to make sure they’re locked or reminds me to do so.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Let him watch tv? Let him eat potato chips? How/if to punish him when he rips a little girl’s glasses off her face at school? (Besides looking at him in a bewildered way and saying “but why would you DO something like that?”) What to say when he bluntly tells a friend of mine that the food she made was awful? I give this thing my best. At least I try to. But it is not easy. Maybe because I procreated with someone so wildly different from me. Maybe because I’m a girl raising a boy. Maybe because I’m not cut out for this. I don’t know. But I can’t shake it, “i wonder if there’s something wrong with us.”

In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m feeling kind of melancholy. Sort of like this…