The Cupertino Courier
Letters & Opinions
Nest may be empty, but she's still a mom
By Carol Bogart
It's an interesting transition, becoming yourself again after 18 years of being mostly "Mike's mom." Especially if you're a single parent who's been both mom and dad.
My son, Mike, left for San Jose State in the fall of 2004.
At the time, I was pretty much ready to let him go.
Not that I loved him any less than I had when, as a tiny boy seated beside me on the couch, he'd thrown his arms around me saying, "Don't worry, mommy, I'll pretect you," when something in a movie startled me and made me shriek.
What I didn't love was the late-night raucousness of one who, having started school almost a year late because his was an October birthday, was 18 through much of his senior year. Any objections I raised regarding his activities were often met with, "Mom, I'm an adult now."
Periodically I would remind him adults pay their own car insurance, do their own laundry, hold down jobs and go to bed at a reasonable hour.
I decided obnoxious behavior was God's plan for making us willing to boot baby out of the nest.
Still, my eyes grow moist whenever I remember the time-honored strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" floating over the football field at Castro Valley High School--and Mike, his bearing so erect, so proud--walking across the stage to accept his diploma.
Because he has attention deficit disorder, diagnosed when he was 4, getting through one year of school, let alone 12, was far from easy.
Mike's was a very difficult delivery. His birth records read: "severe birth asphyxia." He arrived unconscious and, literally, the color of an eggplant, and required 31/2 days in newborn intensive care. I was a TV news anchor in Denver then, and later heard it was "the talk of the hospital how blue the Bogart baby was."
Each Mother's Day for 20 years, I marvel again at how well he's doing, and I'm deeply grateful for him, no matter how hard it's sometimes been.
There were some less-than-appealing ADHD moments even when he was a toddler. Long before he was officially diagnosed, I asked his teachers if they thought he was hyper.
To keep him safe once he learned to climb, I always stacked two baby gates, one on top of the other, in the doorway to his bedroom.
Once, not long after I'd had the lower level of the house carpeted in $22-per-square foot (expensive in 1987) pale beige thick pile carpet, Mike and I had just gotten home from the grocery store. For what was little more than a split second, I put down the big bottle of Blue Cheer, ready to take it to the basement, and went down the short hall to the kitchen to put away the milk.
My shoulders stiffened when, behind me, I heard gleeful chortling. Rushing back, I saw a river of Blue Cheer flowing down newly carpeted stairs--and a thoroughly delighted 2-year-old giggling on the landing.
Infuriating then, a favorite shared story now.
Before I had Mike, the doctor said it was unlikely I would have children without exhaustive fertility treatments, and even at that, there were no guarantees.
Yet here he is, and here am I, with lifetime membership in a special club, one that will be honored worldwide this Sunday.
Carol Bogart is the new editor of the Cupertino Courier. Contact her at cbogart@community-newspapers.com or call 408.200.1055.
