First Born

Firstborns are raging fires. They bend into the winds, plowing forward at all costs. 

My son was born with red embers in his belly. He screamed and spit his first few years. Stomping his feet in frustration at all the things he couldn’t yet understand. 

My friend would watch in awe as we communicated in fits and starts.

“It’s like you have your own language. I don’t know if I have ever seen a mother and a son so connected.”

We had to be. He didn’t sleep so he clung to me endlessly day and night. I wore holes in the floor pacing at night, my arms cramped from cradling his little body, trying to understand what had pissed him off so royally.

Then he started to talk. Once that happened, he turned into an elderly man. 

“Mom, I’m going upstairs to dress.” Ziggy at three.

“I hate teenagers. They smoke and are dangerous.” Ziggy at five.

“Mom, I’m making some homemade pasta.” Ziggy at ten.

“I love this place. Can we come back tomorrow?” Ziggy at my mom’s memory care home. 

Now Ziggy is sixteen. He has aged at warp speed. Never caring about phones or social media, just driven to be the best at whatever is in his sights at the time. 

He has a job now and works himself to the bone, then comes home and collapses on the couch, grumpy and exhausted. 

“I have to meet my quota,” he murmurs. The only quota he has is the wild expectation he has set for himself. 

He lays on the couch beside me, head on my arm tugging his fingers through my hair.

“Stop pulling away mom. It doesn’t hurt. Just let me get the tangles out.” 

So I grit my teeth and sit there, letting him rip my hair out. Maybe that will release some of his tangled anxiety.

When my son was a baby a friend came to help me in the early days. She was such a confident mom with several amazing kids that I hung on her every word. 

“Your first is a love-hate relationship. It’s l that first love that breaks your heart. But you keep chasing after them,” she told me one day. 

And it’s true. 

It’s like having a love that changes your life and then they start to walk away and you can’t breathe. 

But they leave you every day. So your heart just keeps breaking. 

I am his mother. I need to do something to help him, to keep his fire from burning out of control, but what? And how? 

He is a runner at the beginning of the race. Leaning forward on his toes, muscles tense and ready to take off. So no matter what I say, it will be lost. He will be too far ahead of me to hear. 

So here I sit. Heartbroken as my son pulls the knots out of my hair.