Mama, what is therapy?

My son asked me about therapy. If I went (which I do) and why do people go. Believe it or not, he saw it on Nickelodeon. His favorite cartoon Timmy Turner of the Fairly Odd Parents—another Nickelodeon genius cartoon—was in therapy. “Do you lay down on the long chair too?”. I told him I didn’t, that mine was the sort where you just sit on a regular chair. “And what do you talk about?”. I told him therapy is pretty much like the talks that he and I have about things in life, both the regular things and the tough things, things about feelings. He said “Like the time you slipped up and told me Elmo was real?”; I agreed yes, that could qualify. He mentioned another time, “you remember when you were really sick?”. And I did, this was maybe three years ago when I had a 10 day stomach virus and lost about as many pounds. “I remember you had a bucket where you threw up and it was almost like half full and the stuff was green and I remember Papa would not come help us. And I had a little cut on my big toe, remember?”. I did not remember the big toe cut, in fact I don’t remember much from that week plus of throwing up 10 lbs of water weight… He then said, “I hated him that day. We were alone and hurt and he did not come help us.”


My son has been acting all kinds of crazy lately. Energy is off, his mood is off. He is acting out. He is fucking up his grades, forgetting his work at school, forgetting his glasses at home. Forgetting what I asked him to do or taking forever to do it and getting a smart mouth when I get frustrated. All kinds of crazy and I was not understanding why he was doing this. And on and on we went the last few weeks and yesterday when he curled up and asked me about therapy and then said, “can we play therapy” and told me he had lots of things he wanted to talk about, I realized, even before he said it, that he had to talk to me about his Papa. And so we did. I talked to him for a very long time and then convinced him to call his father and tell him some of what he had told me, which he did. That talk was fine but my son’s voice was cracking and it often is. The places that hurt me are not just present places, they are long buried places and insofar as I feel like I relate to that little voice cracking, it sort of sends me in a spin. Any parts of my childhood that are evoked by my son’s life are not good signs for me. In fact that is what I live for and struggle against—to make sure his is as distinct from my experience as could possibly be. And for the most part, actually for the entirety, it is. Still, when he hurts and I can’t make it stop because it’s not me he needs, that hurts. And when he hurts and brings it to his father's attention and I hear in his sadness a world of aprehension, an utter lack of confidence in his rights vis a vis that love, it's like somebody cuts off my air supply. My baby, asking for love--what the fuck?

The feeling is strangely claustrophobic. This feeling of drowning or choking to death in front of this parenting that is imperfect, this world that is not as kind as it should be, this reality that fails to be as good my wonderful kid that’s in it. You try and keep perspective and you try and keep a longitudinal view and you know you are a great parent and hell if somebody fucks up, it usually ain’t you and your kid’s ultimately okay, but in the moment the thought is just “help!”. Help me make it okay, I have given everything that I have God knows, this is not for lack of trying very hard and putting every bit of what’s best that I have on the line every day, I have held nothing out—all for him to be happy and he is not happy—help!

In those moments you make lots of mistakes and I for one, tend to call his father. I call and I want to voice my son’s needs, articulated beyond his seven year old claims and questions, I want to communicate the urgency, I want to connect with that moment—all the things that he tells me because he trusts me but which in their frankness pierce really deeply—I want to pass that on. I think silly me, if his father heard it like I heard it then… But it’s not the case. His father’s barely finding his own way, he is drowning always, choking always. He’s up to here with his own trials and tribulations and remains forever concerned with defending himself, forever unable to face certain facts, adjust certain behaviors. Our son's needs, certainly his hurt feelings are to his father just another, perhaps the worse incarnation of the world, once more, passing judgment on him. It must be neutralized, danced around, placated. I believe he is mystified at his inability in some recess of his being; I believe that in some place deep down where he can be honest he wishes he could stop being a primarily selfish creature. Selfish people make lousy parents: both he and I know this too well.

Knowing all that I call and maybe that’s just pathetic and without reason. And what do I get? Chewed out for being melodramatic and long winded and wasting his time saying things he already knew because he “already talked to him last night.” I’m making a very rare concerned co-parent phonecall, and I am feeling very badly and I need support and he’s telling me—no, he is brushing me off because he “already knows” everything I’m trying to say?! I go off and I am that stereotypical voice of the righteous indignation of the single mother, my own cliche makes me cringe but it's way past me at this point. I go totally nuts. Really? Because I don’t think you already know how many times he forgot something somewhere the last two weeks, like a person under serious stress. I don’t think you already know how much of a hard time he’s getting from his teacher and then from his mother while he fails to get it together. I don’t think you know how these past weeks have ruined his beautiful grades he worked so hard to get. I don’t think you already know that every time you disappear he assumes it’s something he failed to do to keep you interested. I don’t think you already know all the things he wishes you all did together, I don’t think you already know what it sounds like when he says, looking at his friends’ father talking him to the game, “I wish I had a Dad like that.” I don’t think you already know that this last disappearing act evoked in him memories of other ones, and that he wanted to talk about them and that he remembers details. I don’t think you already know because I’m the one whose job it is to hear and see and know. I don’t think you know a motherfucking thing.