Five days before Dylan went to college, on the way home from Shane’s therapy session, I nearly ran over a bird on the road. It was sitting eight inches into oncoming traffic on a very busy street near my house.
I screamed something and pulled the car over, jumping out. I ran barefoot with a flip-flop in one hand, waving it at oncoming traffic to call attention to the bird. As I got closer, with cars and trucks roaring by, the bird sat very still. It didn’t even notice my approach.
It was a bright red cardinal with a blue head – a molting male, I think. Gorgeous but stunned, he just stared at me as I walked around it. He didn’t move at all.
I had no idea how to save him from the onslaught of cars, so I waved wildly with a flip-flop. Miraculously, he flew to the other side of the road! He didn’t fly high, but he went safely into the brush.
I got back into my car and drove away, happy to have helped.
The next day, I was at my computer when I saw a bird hopping around on the deck outside my window. It was the exact same bird.
He was easily a mile from where I’d seen him more than 24 hours before.
There’s no reason in the world for a bird to hop around on that deck. He seemed to be looking for something, so I took some bird seed outside and tossed it into the grass, but the bird didn’t seem to be looking for seeds.
About an hour later, another cardinal attacked him in our driveway. The molting cardinal didn’t seem to be able to get away, or to fight back. So I ran out – again – and saved him from the attacker.
Half an hour later, the red-and-blue cardinal was still sitting quietly in my yard.
So I went outside. Bill and I caught him in a box. He could still fly, but not into a tree. I figured my house was safer at night, and we could take him to the wildlife rehabilitation center in the morning.
I put a little water dish and some bird seed into our dog crate, and put a towel inside for a bit of privacy. It was very quiet in the house. The bird sat still for a minute or two, and then he promptly went to sleep.
I thought about the mile trek that bird made, from the busy street to my house. I thought about him surviving the night, with all the predators roaming around. I wondered what caused him to be so confused, why he was sitting in the road, why he ventured to my deck.
Shane said, “Maybe God sent him to you, to show you he was all right.”
I smiled. “Maybe He did,” I said.
The bird slept peacefully in the dog crate for a couple of hours. And then, without a sound, the bird died.
Bill found him, and I couldn’t believe he had come all this way just to die. I wanted to remember him sleeping so soundly.
As Bill was cleaning out the crate and burying the bird, I said, “You have my permission to lie. You can tell me that he just flew away!”
And Bill said, “Up there!” He pointed to a hundred-foot tree. “He flew way up into that tree!”
I smiled, for a half-second, believing it.
And then I started to cry, because that was what I wished most of all for that little bird.
A few days later, I took Dylan to college and watched him fly away.
Dylan is leaving. It is happening now.
The word “stressed” doesn’t cover how we – as a family – have been during the few weeks before Dylan left. Yes, it’s hard. Moving is hard. Leaving is stressful. Change is stressful.
But that wasn’t nearly enough to describe the feeling.
We know we are going to miss Dylan. We know the dynamic in the house will never be the same. Some life is going to be kicked out of our souls because Dylan won’t be here, with all of his enthusiasm for life and music and the world.
While it feels like Dylan is just a big ball of energy most of the time, and that the energy is sometimes misplaced because of the ADHD, this summer brought a realization that Dylan was more than just overzealous energy: he is the energy in the family. Even when he wasn’t home, he evoked strong emotions. And he will still evoke strong emotions – for all of us.
Mostly, Dylan is big and bold and beautiful. He is like a blazing light that shines into the room, making everything sparkle.
When our dog died in December, Dylan called Xena “the soul of our family.” And there was something to that, certainly. Xena brought us together in a way no one else ever will.
But I think all of us play our parts – and together we make the soul. And with Dylan not here, what will become of our family’s soul?
I recognize that he’s not dead, of course. I am thrilled to know that he’ll not only be back, but that we’ll be able to spend time with him on the phone, texting and face-timing, and that we’ll even get to see him in person, in action, on the college campus. I’m excited for him to keep growing into an adult, to live his own life, to be his own person.
And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Dylan is going to be where he belongs, doing what he most needs to do, and becoming an even better person because of it.
But there is going to be a huge hole in our house when he leaves, and nothing else in the world will be able to fill it.
“Sad” isn’t the word for what I feel, and neither is “utter despair.” I’m crying, but it is more for something I have lost than for losing him. I know he’s going to be great, no matter where he lives.
I just feel like I spent my whole youth wishing I had some reason for living, and that when Dylan came along, I found that reason. And Shane completed my reason for living.
I am Mom. It may not be enough for everyone, but parenting is the only thing that ever made me feel whole. And I will still be a parent – but not to my baby Dylan, who – as a toddler – so lovingly bowled me over when he ran into my open, waiting arms.
My arms, though, will be wide open and waiting, if he ever needs to return.
Shane’s OCD began to dominate his life, rather suddenly, sometime during our summer vacation at the end of July.
Back in the spring, he was worried about things. Shane was afraid to read his homework “too well” for fear of getting a grade that would set his GPA “too high,” which would get him into “too good” of a college and cause him to get a job that he didn’t want. If he got through his homework, then, his life would be mess as an adult.
Instead of worrying about failing, Shane was worried about succeeding. And the thought of his life being ruined by how well he did – or didn’t – read his homework assignment was debilitating.
But a few weeks later, Shane’s OCD had progressed – in his mind – to a much scarier place. He still couldn’t concentrate on reading. But he was also worried that if he did something involuntarily – move his hand or swallow – he could inadvertently destroy everyone on the planet.
Therapy’s answer was to have him do exactly what the OCD didn’t want him to do. So Shane moved and swallowed, fully expecting that he was somehow killing people because of his actions. He felt guilty and horrible and didn’t want to do anything because of both the risk that someone would die, and the guilt that he had caused it.
Shane knew intellectually that he wasn’t being rational. But his thoughts were taking on a life of their own – which is exactly how OCD feels. It’s like having a bully inside the brain, telling you things that aren’t true just to get a rise out of you.
And with Dylan on the verge of leaving home, Shane is getting worse instead of better – possibly related to stress.
His therapist suggested medication – which must be prescribed by a psychiatrist, which Shane doesn’t have. So I am seeking psychiatrists.
I am researching like mad on the internet for natural assistance – even temporary help: supplements, amino acids, ways to boost serotonin – anything to help Shane now. Vitamin B, a serotonin booster, seemed to make his OCD worse. So he tried 5-HTP, an amino acid that helps with serotonin production. It didn’t seem to do anything at all.
There’s some evidence that an overabundance of glutamine in the brain might exacerbate OCD. This made sense, given the crap that Shane eats, but the brain has very strong protection (called the blood brain barrier) to keep glutamine out. So I bought some NAC to boost that barrier and prepared Shane with a list of chemical glutamine items. I warned him that he might need to change the way he eats, but most of that stuff isn’t in the foods he eats.
Shane’s symptoms are 100% normal for someone with OCD, but they are scary symptoms. I am just hoping and praying – and praying some more – that Shane is all right.
I just want him to be all right.
Dylan’s college orientation was filled with delightful surprises: students on stage, telling their stories; a two-hour volleyball game filled with endless laughter; a reassurance from the Dean of Students that made me laugh out loud – and nearly sob with recognition.
But the two-day event didn’t start well. Dylan left our Air BnB late – a full half-hour late – knowing that I couldn’t leave without him. We went to pick up breakfast at a local restaurant, and it was not good. And then, when I finally dropped him off to rush his luggage to the appropriate place, Dylan forgot his hairbrush.
If Dylan had short hair, maybe this wouldn’t have been a problem. But I have seen his nearly waist-length hair in the mornings. So I took it upon myself to locate his overnight dwelling and deliver the hairbrush to the front desk. There, if Dylan so desired, he could pick up said brush and take it to his dorm room.
When I was leaving the dorm, the student assistants pointed me out a back door for quickest access to our first orientation session. Finished with my task, I headed for that door and stepped outside.
And then time stopped.
I stepped into a courtyard that, because of its location, was beautiful but probably rarely used. A few chairs sat empty next to two untouched tables. Even amidst the greenery that surrounded them, the courtyard felt entirely unblemished. And it was – quite suddenly – dead quiet.
It was the first time I’d ever been on campus without anyone else there.
In a trance-induced slow motion, I walked silently through the courtyard, and it hit me like it has never hit me before: Dylan’s going to be here without me.
I saw him in my mind’s eye, moving silently through this courtyard, busily heading for class – his backpack slung over one shoulder, shoving a bagel into his mouth, a cell phone distracting his pace.
And he was alone, too, in my imagination. He was alone, but confident, comfortable with this campus, a member of the college community. He was living his life – and doing it without me, without teachers or a principal, without brothers or parents or grandparents. He was living successfully, independently, just walking through that space, going where he needed to go.
It only took a moment – ten seconds, maybe – for me to feel so strongly how Dylan will feel at college. My own past collided a bit with his future, and I saw all the positive, wonderful energy that would be his to experience.
And then I walked on, through two powerful, reassuring days for both parents and students alike.
The next day, as we were leaving, I purposefully took Dylan through that same back door, through the courtyard. This time, there were gardeners trimming the hedges, blowing the brush, clearing a pathway that was already clear. The tables were still empty, but the courtyard was abuzz with noise and life.
Dylan didn’t notice the space at all. But I watched him walk through that courtyard, leading the way, showing me how to get back to my car so that I could go home.
And in a few months, my home will be here, and his home will be there.
And thanks to that one, slow-motion moment, I think it’s going to be okay.
I asked Shane if it was okay to post this, since it’s a pretty good example of what he goes through with OCD. Sometimes his thinking is so obsessive that it really does hamper his daily life – and I thought this was a pretty good example of his occasional bizarre thinking.
Shane was at his computer, playing video games, when he got angry. One of the other players did something that made him furious – so much so, that he stood up.
“For some reason,” Shane told me, “I thought I should get a knife. And I turned around like I was going to walk into the kitchen to where the knives were.”
“Okay…?” I said.
“And then I spent like 20 minutes thinking that I might be a murderer.”
Hm. I thought. This is a terrible way to feel. He doesn’t realize that we all have feelings like this, but that he was controlling his own anger, tackling his own impulses. Shane was worried that he was out of control, but Shane has the most controlled impulses of anyone I’ve ever seen.
So I talked to Shane about impulse control, about not being responsible for the thoughts that randomly fly into your head. The key to being okay, I said, is what you do or don’t do with those thoughts.
“You are testing your boundaries,” I told him. “Dylan does it all the time. Sometimes Dylan will pick up a knife and walk around with it. He’s testing himself, in a way, to make sure he has control of his impulses. And you were doing the same thing by turning around and thinking about the knives. You chose not to do anything about your thought, which means you have control over your own impulses.”
Shane seemed to understand, and I hope it helped to talk to me.
I know that talking about his wild thoughts – the kind he thinks are dangerous – can help him to recognize that they are just thoughts, that they don’t determine who he is. Shane sometimes thinks that because he has upsetting thoughts, or does questionable things accidentally, that he could end up imprisoned for life.
His OCD took a relatively normal thought and obsessively suggested that he was a murderer because he thought about picking up a knife.
I will be curious – when I talk to his therapist next – to find out whether the next rational step would be to hold the knife, and realize it’s not dangerous, or if it’s to play the thought through in his head, and have Shane realize that he would never do the things he thinks he “could” do.
Until then, though, I hope Shane knows: we all have angry thoughts. It’s what we do with those thoughts that matters most.
We spent our vacation riding roller coasters. We stormed through every one at Kings Dominion, and then we spent a day at a water park and three additional days at Busch Gardens.
It was a very good vacation. We love roller coasters, and to say we overdid it would be an understatement. But it is a happy understatement.
At one point, in all of our enthusiasm, we were standing in line and heard someone on the roller coaster stomp twice and clap, stomp twice and clap – the universal beginning of the spectacularly contagious Queen song, We Will Rock You.
BOOM BOOM, CLAP! BOOM BOOM, CLAP!
Someone sang, “We will, we will rock you!” from the chorus.
BOOM BOOM, CLAP! BOOM BOOM, CLAP!
I jumped in with the first verse, singing loud and proud: “Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday!”
I’d expected the crowd to join in. My own kids sang this song in their elementary school talent show – but they were both dead silent.
I was singing loud enough for the entire roller coaster platform to hear me – but I realized quite suddenly that no one was singing along.
There was still some stomping and clapping, I think. Maybe it was just my own feet and hands. Still, I couldn’t stop mid-verse. I was on a roll!
“You got mud on your face! Big disgrace! Somebody better put you back into your place!”
The verse ended; the crowd-pleasing chorus was about to start again. For sure, someone would jump in now.
I kept singing. “We will, we will ROCK YOU!”
Alone.
Mercifully at this point, the roller coaster took off, drowning out all sound and giving me a chance to stop performing for the crowd. I immediately shut up, red-faced with either excitement or humiliation; I wasn’t sure which.
I looked around at my family, waiting for the roller coaster.
My husband’s jaw was on the floor. Shane’s eyes were darting back and forth between family members, checking to see if he should laugh or cry. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry.
I looked at Dylan – a booming singer and the ultimate performer, who could easily have joined me in song and saved us all. Dylan had his head cupped in one hand, covering most of his face with three fingers. He didn’t move when he spoke, but his eyes and comment were aimed directly at me.
Dylan said, “What do you think this is, High School Musical?”
And then we all knew it was okay to laugh.
Mere moments later, we hopped onto Apollo’s Chariot and rode into the sun.
When I dropped off Shane at camp, I hugged him tight before allowing him to say goodbye. As a teenager, he tightened and pushed away a little.
I kissed his head anyway, and told him I’d miss him.
“Geez,” Shane said, finally breaking free. “Is this how it’s going to be when you drop Dylan off at college?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’ve had 18 years to prepare for that! I’m sure I’ll be much better then.”
Hm, I thought. I really have been preparing for that for 18 years. But I am not the least bit ready.
I often realize that all of my worrying is useless. I recognize – logically – that nothing I do can “prepare” me for something as dramatic as my baby leaving the nest. And I know perfectly well that there is nothing that’s going to make Dylan’s leaving any easier on me, except possibly knowing that he is going to a place that is completely perfect for him.
And he is. But as much as I know it’s the natural order of things, I still don’t want him to go.
Heck, I didn’t even want Shane to leave for five days to enjoy camp. When Shane left this year, it was a little tougher for two reasons: (1) He and I had just enjoyed a great trip together to Blobfest and its surrounding colleges; and (2) Shane was going to camp without Dylan for the first time.
Everything went fine, of course. But I was a bit lonely. Shane and I spend time actually talking, and there aren’t that many people who will spend time talking to me. Shane is deep and funny and interesting, in a way that I’ve only experienced with a handful of people in my lifetime.
Now that I think about it, when Shane leaves for college – prepared or not – I am likely to fall apart completely.
But for now, we are just planning for our upcoming vacation, chatting about some college stuff here and there, enjoying our summer, spending time with friends. We’re just going about our business like it’s any other day.
I am trying to live one day at a time. It is hard, but I am really trying. I truly believe it’s the only way to save my sanity.
No one asks about my eating habits.
Still, I struggle daily with what I can and cannot eat in my current condition. “Leaky gut” means that my intestines are disintegrating, making it very difficult for me to normally digest anything. And “autoimmune disorder” means whatever I eat affects whether or not I feel okay.
I am getting better. After nine months of eating no dairy, no gluten, no corn, no potatoes, no soy and no sugar, my numbers are all better. I’m trying to eat a little of this and that in moderate amounts, and learning that I still can eat almost nothing without some repercussions.
But no one asks about this. They are too busy trying not to shame themselves for what they eat. My own family has continued to eat whatever they want, every day, leaving me in the dust with my powders and supplements and unlimited vegetables.
On my own, though, I am trying to eat just one “forbidden” food a day – a little bit of feta on my salad, or a handful of popcorn – and see if I can thrive in spite of it.
When I was in high school, I saw a movie called Mad Max at the theater, starring a very young Mel Gibson. The movie was not my style, but my 15-year-old self enjoyed having two hours in a cool, dark place to stare at the man with the blue eyes.
Mel Gibson was drop-dead gorgeous. A few years after Mad Max, he was voted Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. No one was surprised. The perfect symmetry, the dazzling smile, and an Australian accent on top of it all – what could be sexier?
A few decades went by. Then, suddenly and startlingly, Mel Gibson was outed to the public for being the devil incarnate. I won’t detail his atrocities. That gorgeous man became the ugliest creature the world has ever known.
So in the midst of my food struggles, as I was – alone – trying to find a balance between eating for health and eating for pleasure, I had a dream.
In this dream, I was lying next to a very young Mel Gibson, who was staring dreamily into my eyes and smiling. Then he leaned in, tentatively, and lightly brushed my lips with his own. And I was drawn in, and flustered, and giggly.
“We should do that every day,” Mel Gibson whispered. “One kiss every day.”
Then I woke up.
And I thought, Mel Gibson?! Why HIM, of all people? And almost before the thought completed itself, I realized: who else would it be?
Mel Gibson today is a monster, but originally he was beautiful. He perfectly symbolizes my desire for all the foods that will kill me – all those attractive, deadly foods. Every day, I eat a bit of indigestible gluten, a touch of dairy, a dozen grams of sugar.
So of course I was kissing Mel Gibson. Just like food, he was alluring – until he wasn’t alluring anymore.
And now, even though nobody has asked, I am trying to get back on track. Instead of kissing Mel Gibson once a day, I am remembering that being healthy made me feel happier. It made me feel calmer, less agitated.
Ice cream made me sick for 20 years. But the rest of the foods – banana bread, for example, and cheddar cheese – are every bit as attractive to me now as Mel Gibson was when I was 15 years old. And that scares the heck out of me. In fact, I’m surprised I’m not having full-blown nightmares.
Unless I just had one.
Dylan’s college orientation turned out to be quite wonderful – with one notable exception.
As usual, Dylan’s college went above and beyond the call of duty to not only educate and inform, but also to entertain. Parents and students alike had a marvelous time; there were tears and lots of laughter. People took notes and recorded things on their phones. Kids met other kids and made friends. It was a joyous, wonderful occasion and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
But at the end of the last parent session, I got a text from Dylan, who was – while sitting in his student orientation session – registering for classes for the fall semester:
Basically I shouldn’t take any of the classes on my list.
I was transfixed in my Parenting Transition seminar and typed back only: why?
This is the recommended first semester registration for my major. He sent a photo with a list of classes for the Music Performance major: Music Theory, Aural Skills, Diction, Piano….
To backtrack, Dylan wanted to study music, but he really didn’t want to go the classical route. Unfortunately, that’s where he landed.
So we went back and forth, via text, as the Parenting Transition seminar ended, and I headed into the Parent Reception. I made a number of suggestions that he summarily dismissed. And, since I’d just been reminded during two full days of orientation to “go with the flow” and “let him make his own decisions,” I finally asked:
How are you feeling about your major?
And got this very immediate response:
I wanna do music business.
Okay, I said.
I can do Music Business and take voice lessons on the side and walk away with so much more than I would with this major.
He was starting to freak out. His emails got longer and more desperate. He wasn’t registering for anything because he didn’t know what to register for. I was scouring the internet, trying to figure out what he should take if he switched to music business, and sending him screenshots – which included courses like Accounting and Macroeconomics.
Why do I have to take Accounting? I don’t want to be an accountant.
I was just wandering amongst the muffin-eating, coffee-drinking parents. I didn’t even know where Dylan was – only that he was about to register for classes he didn’t want to take – and I started to freak out, too.
And that’s when I looked up from my phone. There, among the couple hundred parents drinking juice, and only two feet in front of me, stood the dean of the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business at Belmont University.
Conveniently, I’d met the dean in the fall, at an open house event, so I recognized him right away. And Dylan had contacted him in the fall, too, so the dean actually remembered that Dylan was considering changing his major.
The dean pulled out his cell, made a quick call, and told me what to tell Dylan. Within three minutes, Dylan was crossing campus from the School of Music to the College of Entertainment and Music Business.
I do believe that God put that dean there, at that time, in that place. The timing in that situation was absolutely impossible to ignore. And there weren’t any other deans walking around amongst the parents. This dean was just wandering through, and standing two feet in front of me at exactly the right moment.
And that’s how Dylan changed his major – and all of his class choices – in one fell swoop, just as his college orientation was ending.
Since Shane is a horror fan, I scheduled a trip to a nearby celebration of horror. It’s called Blobfest.
Blobfest is a fan festival for an old, old movie called The Blob. Made in 1958, The Blob was filmed in Pennsylvania, in a small town with a historic theater called The Colonial.
In the movie, the blob – a terrifying mass of red goo – threatens the town, eating inanimate objects, buildings and people in its way. At one point, it oozes into the local theater- The Colonial – and hordes of teenagers run screaming out the front doors, narrowly escaping the blob.
The Colonial is still standing. And once a year, for 20 years now, the town celebrates by allowing folks to reenact the run-out scene on Friday night – followed by movie marathons and an all-day street festival on Saturday, and guest speakers on Sunday.
Shane and I have never experienced anything quite like it. We couldn’t understand the fascination with this particular movie, but even its fans seem to realize that it wasn’t a particularly well made piece of art. It’s campy in a way that few other movies can match.
But we celebrated anyway. In fact, we were among the couple of hundred fortunate people to actually RUN in the runout. It was our first time at Blobfest, and we were both shocked to the point of near stopping when we first ran out of the theater:
There were thousands of people outside, lining the streets, watching us run. I mean THOUSANDS! For a moment, I felt like Paul McCartney in 1965.
We ran for less than a minute, past the throng of onlookers, and kept on going right to our car, still stunned by our audience.
We didn’t come back until Saturday.
For Saturday, we donned hand-made CO2 shirts, which – spoiler alert – were a hit during the street festival. We had tickets for both The Blob and Forbidden Planet. And we wandered past booths shopping the horror-induced artwork, DVDs, buttons, magnets and shirts. While Shane’s favorite movies are much more modern, he was able to procure a light switch cover featuring Stephen King’s It villain, Pennywise.
We watched an incredibly ridiculous parade, a costume contest that wasn’t about costumes at all, a screaming competition, and some performances that were among the most bizarre of anything we’ve seen in our lives.
Blobfest has been recognized – quite literally – by Ripley’s Believe It or Not, inducted into the bowels of the museum in 2016.
And now, thanks to my off-the-beaten-path son, I can say I’ve experienced it firsthand.
There’s even a chance we’ll be going back next year. God help us all.
