“Mammas’ Boy..?”

Relationships are complicated; none are so complicated as the one between mother and son. From the frosty winter day I was born on, I was a mammas’ boy. Everything I did, I did it to please her. She was my life, always looking out for me and I, in turn, was always looking out for her. Life was easier back when my mom would look at me with her beautiful blue eyes and gently whisper, “everything is going to be alright.”
Mother’s don’t tell you all the lies they tell just to comfort you. When I learned of my parents divorce my mind went back several years to a comforting promise my mother had told me when I was upset by an argument her and my father had… How things change, the promises that are broken with time, along with hearts and innocence. How did a little comforting lie cannon ball into such a strained relationship with my mother as we have today?
It started with the broken promise but, my mother eased this when she told me I was her favorite. Of course, I knew this already, as I have always been favored. Which may be why my brothers didn’t like me that much when we were young. I’ve often wondered about this and about why I was the favorite. What about me set me apart from my siblings? Was it my calm demeanor and never getting into or causing trouble? Or maybe it was that I had a creative side much like her, after all I did look like her and maybe she liked me a little more because she saw herself in me. I’ll never really be sure but, what I do know is that after the divorce she came to rely on me more, to the point that she had me playing dad to my baby sister.
I spent the next six years taking care of my family and raising my sister while my mother worked two jobs just to pay the rent and feed her four children. I did the dishes, changed the diapers, cleaned up after everyone and even cooked dinner for the family and saved left overs for mom. I continue to do what ever I could to please her… but the broken promise kept eating at me everytime she would tell another comforting lie…
I grew up, fed up with the lies and mis-truths and moved out as soon as it was economicly feasable. I became independent of her or, so I told myself, as I walked to her house one day when she called me for help. I may not have lived at her house but, I did spend a lot of time there. I thought I was being the noble son, always there for his mother however, I was merely enabling her to trap me as man of the house, always at her beck & call.
Then one day I met a brilliant young woman who would rock my world in more ways than one. My future wife immediately saw in me a man capable of anything his heart desired and made it her personal mission to see to it that those desire would grown to fruitation. She challenged me like no one ever had. She taught me that I could be independent and I could get the high paying job I always wanted and I would make my dreams come true. I fell in love, hard, but when I brought her home to mother, my mom (I later found out) feigned happiness for me. All she saw was her son was being taken away from her forever and she was not going to stand for that.
I was married and had finally moved onto a path that led to some where other than my mammas’ door step. I moved to the nieghboring city and aquired the highest paying low level job in the valley, coveted by everyone I knew. I was learning what independence really meant. I had begun an identity other than, my mothers’ son.
Yet, still at mothers’ beck & call.
It was after my wife had taken time off of college when we were married. A few years later she had come to the conviction that it was time to finish her education and as bold as ever she pursed it, only pausing long enough to ask me if I was ok with moving away from my family. I hadn’t always been supportive during her time at college so I really wanted to make it up to her. I had never been away from home but, when I saw the look on her face when I told her it wouldn’t be a problem… my mind was made up. We sat down and made a plan. We were to leave on January 1st. All I had to do was tell my mother I was moving nine hours away.
Easier said than done. That September, shortly after we had made this momentous decision my mothers’ little sister died. How could I tell her, her baby was leaving town for good? So I waited. I had thought two months would be enough. It was coming close to the dead line and I wanted her to have time to deal with it before I left so I could help her with what would be to her a huge transiction. I was not prepared for her reaction at all. She compared me moving from Albany, OR to Moscow, ID, only a nine hour drive away, to her sister leaving her by dying…
What was I supposed to do? I was improving my life. Don’t most parents rejoice in their childrens success? The worst of it, she still holds it against my wife and I.
So, how unfortunate was it, after only three months since our arrival that my wiifes’ National Guard Unit was called for duty in Iraq? As much as this scared me, it also excited me. I finally had a strong enough reason to join the army, something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid but, was strongly discouraged from doing. So, I would sign on the doted line and join the wife and family over seas but, first I wanted my mothers blessing. When she came up for a visit the weekend before I planned to move forward and I told her. I spent the next few hours talking to her through the bathroom door she had locked herself behind crying like a baby. She expressed her thought that I was going to die and how she would have to kill herself if that happened…
“The bible says, “Honor thy parents.” I looked at her and told her what I felt in my heart. “I can not follow this commandment if I let my growth as a human being be stunted by fear. If I donot take the opportunities life presents by the fullest then what will become of me? I want to have children and tell them that I did some good in this world. That I helped give freedom to the middle east. I want to be a part of this great change the great good that can come from this conflict. If I do that, am I not honoring you?”
She told me she would rather me be alive and so I told her a comforting lie, “I promise, I’m not going to die.”