Dude

My son recently turned 16, and the last traces of that sweet little boy who thought I hung the moon seem to have vanished. In his place is a strange, slouching creature with a pencil-thin mustache and adolescent angst oozing from every pore. This extraterrestrial I once called flesh and blood, whose mood swings dwarf the Grand Canyon, seems intent on bungee jumping from that rickety bridge connecting a child with adulthood. And I think he plans on dragging his rapidly aging mother along for the ride.

A drastic language change was the first indication of alien infestation in my once cherished offspring. The rosy-cheeked cherub who used to run to me, eyes shining with adoration and shouting "Mommy!" began to address me (and everyone else) as "Dude." At 16 months, he was a sponge, joyfully soaking up new words, becoming more communicative every day. At 16 years, the hormones surging through his body have cut a swath through the speech center in his brain; his mouth, when it speaks at all, produces mere shrunken shreds of complete sentences apparently understood only by other members of his species.

"S'up" is a perfectly acceptable, all-purpose phrase in an adolescent's world. "Mom, I love you," on the other hand, would burn his monosyllabic lips like acid and permanently corrupt his coolness. Communication with this high-tech yet illiterate generation is fraught with frustration. My son, who can't seem to utter two intelligible sentences to me, airs his gripes through text messaging. Just the other day, a message flashed on my cell phone in fractured syntax designed to torture my English class loving soul.

"i no u h8 me. i try so hard 2 b good. y r u mad @ me?"

Cave men scribbling on walls were more eloquent.

Then there's the alteration in appearance. While I'm desperately trying to avoid bags and sags, this long-haired Neanderthal living in my house embraces them as fashion. Wearing gravity-defying pants slung low across his scrawny backside, he looks just like a baby with an overly full diaper. When I helpfully pointed this out, I got another overwrought, electronic missive that ended with several lines of the text message equivalent of a scream. Athough, when I think about it, this modern means of communication does keep the house quiet.

Adolescent males seem to lose all capacity for living like civilized human beings. This means that my boy constantly raids the refrigerator but can't manage to close a door, that he can take 30-minute showers but never hang up a wet towel, that he stuffs freshly laundered clothes into the back of his closet rather than putting them away. I find sticky cereal bowls under his bed because he was too lazy to return them to the kitchen, and the lunchbox he claimed he lost growing whole colonies of bacteria under his bed. I now understand why some animals eat their young.

The child who begged me to read to him daily now rolls his eyes in disgust when I suggest we turn off the video games and pick up a book. The angel who proudly showed me off to his kindergarten classmates now pretends not to know the deranged woman waving to him in the high school hallway. My fall from grace, seemingly overnight, has left me depressed, bewildered and prone to emotional excess.

"You could cut the apron strings without slicing through my heart, you know," I whimper in one of my calmer moments.

"Mom," he mumbles in that teenage tone of voice, "why can't you just act normal?"

Normal is, of course, a relative term. In about 10 years, I will magically return to normalcy as my pubescent boy turns into an adult. At least I hope I do. In the meantime, I'm going to hang on to those severed apron strings. I may need them to strangle him.

Counting the days...

I'll tell you something about traveling by yourself that my husband has recently learned; or so he tells me: It's ultimately very healthy for your relationship.

When you first learn that one of you has to go away, you're actually both looking forward to it, but neither of you wants to admit it. So you both pretend you are going to be miserable.

"I'm going to miss you."

"I'm really going to miss you."

Again, it's a competition.

"I'm the one unable to live without you."

"No, I'm totally unable to live without you, I swear."

The truth is, one of you is thrilled to be going somewhere, and the other can't wait to have the house to themselves. Then, you get to where you are going, and you find that you really do miss each other. If for no other reason, you forgot how to be alone.

Me: "Babe, where are my glasses? . . . Babe? . . . Oh, right you're in Muncie. . . I'll just. . . find them myself. That's what I used to do, sure. . . "

My husband was so excited to be going home, but now he's staying in a hotel in the town where the wedding is being held. He was more comfortable at his mom's I think.

"You wouldn't believe the hotel I'm stuck in. I wish you were here."

"To see the cheesy hotel?"

"Yes."

Or he just needs to hear a sane voice. Have you ever called from a family get together like the one he's at, that your partner weaseled out of? (weaseled: meaning "had to work" in this case)

"Hi--I'm going OUT OF MY MIND."

"It's only for four more days."

"I won't make it, you hear me? I WON'T."

Then he starts pining for home, like a child.

"How's the house?"

"What do you mean, "How's the house?' "

"What does everything look like?"

"Since you left?"

"Yeah."

"It's all different. I repainted again, knocked down the bathroom wall, your "man-room" is gone. No one really knows how that happened."

"How are the dogs?"

"Fine."

"Do they miss me?"

"Been crying since you left."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously? They have no idea you left. Thinks you are in the shower or sleeping. . . Would you like to know how I am?"

"Yes, yes, I was just going ask. I swear--that was my next question. How are you?"

Hotel vs Mom

My husband is going to his brother's wedding this week. He gets to stay at his parent's house but if it was up to me, I'd stay at a hotel.

I'll tell you what I love about hotels: They can't do enough for you. They want to make you feel at home, and then they give you things that nobody has at home. Shower caps, shoe horns. . . and sewing kits? My husband has never sewn in his life. What makes then think he's going to start at the Marriott in Muncie, Indiana? Has anybody ever made that call? "Honey, I'm in Indiana, and my buttons are flying off like crazy! What do I do? What? Yes, there's a sewing kit right here. OK, I have it. Talk me through."

And I love the little chocolates on the pillow. There's a clever snacking item, because personally, there's nothing I like better right before I go to bed than a nice diabetic seizure. A pound and a half of sugar before going to sleep, good idea.

I want to know how they selected chocolate as the appropriate treat. What were the other suggestions? "How about . . . scallops? Do you think scallops would be good on a pillow? Or maybe kiwi. Several kiwi, thinly sliced . . ."