Thursday, June 3, 2010

Going Postal

My son Sam recently turned 20 and I went postal. Not because he turned 20, but because the United States Postal Service does not deliver overnight from Temecula to Chico, and it was a huge, epic Mommie crisis.

I got up early the morning before his birthday and made a special batch of his favorite cookies to ship to him with his birthday box. Admittedly, I was sad thinking about him celebrating his birthday away at school and wanted to make sure a piece of Mommie love arrived on his doorstep on his actual birthday.

Like the many years before, I wanted him home on his birthday. I’d grown to love waking the children up on their birthdays by singing them Happy Birthday and jumping on their beds and smothering them with kisses. They were always allowed to eat ice cream for breakfast on their birthday, a tradition they love. One year, I took the fruit and vegetables out of Sam’s lunchbox and replaced it with a bag of candy. He threw himself around me and said he loved me and I was the best Mommie in the world. I felt like it.

There is no replacement for the intensity of love that pours into my body, mind and soul when I get a dose of love from my children. It literally feeds me. My big, beautiful, 6 ft, 20 year old college student is growing up and growing away and it scares me. I used to be the only one who could feed him. He didn’t want to sleep in his crib; he wanted to be held all night by me, and would cry when I’d try to set him down. At Nursery School, they had to peel him off me, screaming. It’s been baby steps for both of us, because I had to hide in the hedges, wiping away my tears at the Nursery School, peeking in to see if he was going to be ok. There were many days they’d call and say I needed to come pick him up because he just wasn’t going to make it through the day. It was baby steps.

When I stood in the Post Office with Sam’s birthday box, complete with the fresh cookies and was told they didn’t do overnight to Chico for Saturday deliveries, I literally lost my mind. I was sure the Postal Service didn’t quite understand these were Sam’s fresh, hot birthday cookies and needed to be in Chico TOMORROW. My voice was rising and getting screechy and the people in the notoriously long line were getting annoyed. I wanted to jump over the counter, bang some heads and demand a helicopter to airlift my son’s birthday box.

Instead, the birthday box had to make its way to Chico at a snails pace, missing Sam’s birthday and giving me a complete and total Mommie crying meltdown and entertaining everyone in the post office.

One of my best friends, Lori Jagger, my mentor of living life on the “No-Mad Diet” insists the Diet does not exist if the situation has to do with your children. All bets are off and you are allowed to get mad, really, really mad. So, Lori, I just want you to know that my last few postal episodes all had to do with my children. And I think the US Postal Service not delivering Sam’s cookies on his birthday, Saturday, a working postal service day was cause for me to go off the Diet.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Jodi! I can relate to that. As you know, Riley visits his SoCal family every couple of summers but....... this year......he heads to SoCal ON A ONE WAY TICKET! I'm in Mommy Meltdown Mode!!! He starts his final exams next Wednesday and abandons me on 15th July. Considering he's my only child and I've been a single parent since he was two and it's always just been the two of us - I feel like I'm going to be losing part of myself! It's not easy, is it?

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  2. Jodes wrote: "So, Lori, I just want you to know that my last few postal episodes all had to do with my children".

    Hmmmmmm I wonder all of them?
    btw- when is come to the kids all bets and diets are off! Love you!

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