He has written every week, I have been pleased, relieved and surprised to discover.  I have heard more about his days these past 9 weeks than I did the last 4 years of high school!  In that respect, I have already seen change.  But I am still cautious of placing unrealistic expectations on his return.  I coach myself to give him space and time to adjust.  Surely the changes are more in him than in what he left behind.

But I find some peace in sensing a new relationship budding between he and I.  Perhaps one of mutual respect, which I know he felt he never had from me during his teen years.  There were definitely things I respected and loved about him, but the academic struggles always got in the way for us.  Now we can put that behind and focus on his achievements…the ones he chose, the ones he took on like a bull by the horns.  I hope he finds graduation day that much sweeter for having been his own master in this plan.

I feel very empty.  The biggest relationship in my entire life has left its most formative stage, and I feel empty and full of regrets.  Everyone talks of the pride I should feel and how much he will change over the next 13 weeks.  But I cannot honestly say it’s pride I feel nor am I all that optimistic about changes to come.

I’m reminded of a Melissa Etheridge song…”To place me in his life will be hard and slow. Does he want it, need it? I might never know. The boy feels strange.”

I guess all that’s left to do now is…wait.  And that is a place with which I am very familiar.

Two weeks from tomorrow, he will leave to begin his journey into the Marines.  It feels like there’s something profound I should say to him, but any such words feel stuck inside.  I wish I knew that he knows how much he is loved and needed.  Not the exasperated “I know, Mom!” kind of claim to knowing…but the deep-to-your-core feeling kind of knowing such things.

And still…even if I knew he knew…would it make a difference at this juncture?  For me?  For him?  There are things it may carry him through.  But I think I was hoping it would carry him away from the things he is driving fast toward.  Mothering is not for sissies.

It’s been hard for me to accept the vast differences my son and I have in personality and ambitions.  I’ve never wanted a “mini me” but neither did I expect we would speak such different languages.  I am, in truth, saddened by his attraction to violence…video games, movies, television, music…and now career.  I don’t understand it.  I’m not squeamish…but I am sickened at an emotional & spiritual level by the things we human beings perpetrate on each other daily.  He seems unphased.  Why is this?

I told my son in one of our first conversations about his choice to enter the Marines, “I hope your greatest disappointment in this is that you are never faced with having to make a life & death decision…about your own or someone else’s life.”  I still feel that way.  I then told him, “If you ever are in that situation, though, please don’t stop to think about what your momma would do.  Just do what you need to do and come home safe.”

Because, in truth, I am selfish.  I want him alive and well.  I hope too that he gets what he needs from the experience; works out whatever need seems embedded so far inside that I cannot touch.  I’m still working out how I’ll support him through each leg of his chosen path.  I ask God for a little more wisdom and insight than I seem to hold now.

It’s a little odd to me when people say, “Oh, you’ll be so proud of him!”  I am proud of him.  I can’t even place my finger on exactly why yet.  He hasn’t even went through boot camp.  I think I’m proud of the idea of him.  What he could make of it.  I hope he too gains a little more wisdom and insight than he seems to hold now.  But I think I’m the only one praying for that.

I’m not so convinced of the whole channeling idea (I remain such a skeptic of such things), but I do think there is an important underlying message in their work and that is one of personal accountability.  I do believe one’s constant negativity can wreak havoc on one’s life and there are those that would do better to start anew by reframing their lives with their own power.  I am easily lost, however, when negative events in one’s life are always blamed on that individual’s negative thought process.

I choose to fight the temptation to churn in the ugly, the negative.  I am not always successful.  But I am acutely aware that I do not thrive when I am in that frame of mind and emotion.  I feel the spiritual void when I dwell too long in past mistakes, past disappointments.

Some have called Abraham-Hicks a cult and, really, that’s okay by me.  I think anything you blindly follow, throw your money into to the detriment of your own financial stability, use as basis to denounce others, could border on cult and if there are those that follow Abraham-Hicks to those extremes, then I can certainly understand why their loved ones are alarmed.  But the same is true of any of the world’s religions and it has been said (source unknown) that the only difference between religion and cult is the number of followers.

I am taking what I need from it and in true Abraham-Hicks philosophy, if my gut tells me it isn’t ringing true for me, then I am not losing sleep over it.  But,  you know, if Jesus Christ appeared to us today with the same messages he had thousands of years ago, most of us would find reason to dismiss the man and the message.  So I try not to be too arrogant.  Some of us are teachers; some of us still learning.  I admit I’m still a student of it all.

That aside, it was a chilly but beautiful day and the wind was no foe.  We were worn out afterwards, but still proud of having accomplished it.  I confess that we have not been back on our bikes since!  The weather turned chilly and rainy and now we are headed to Vermont on vacation so it may have been the end of that season.

Maude and I would like to purchase an exercise bike to keep up on the riding through the winter.  We want to get an earlier start on our training in the spring.  We hope by fall 2010 we’ll be ready for a (flat, mind you) century ride.

Keep on pedaling!

We traversed nearly the same path I took 7 years ago while training for the century ride I did with Team in Training.  It included stopping at the scene of an infamous corn field that inspired a gift of travel toilet paper from Maude.  The field was now covered in soybeans, but there was no need to recreate personal history.

In that same ride 7 years ago the wind was at my back on the way out.  I hadn’t previously battled a windy day on my bike so when I turned around and started my way back, I was in for a shock.  It was my longest ride to that date and I was already wearing out; now I had to ride into the wind across rolling Southern Indiana hills for 25 miles.

By the time I neared home I was in tears.  I feared the century ride could hold more of the same, being along the ocean in West Palm Beach, Florida.  I felt that if the day was as windy, I wouldn’t finish the century ride.  But it wasn’t…and I finished.

Sunday, we did the same.  Maude and I both marvel at how much stronger we feel.  We are exhausted after a long ride.  I move like an old lady from the stiffness in my knees.  But we recover so much faster and we know the 62 mile Great Pumpkin is within our reach.  Next Sunday…October 4!

Last night I discovered Bicycle Times magazine (issue #3) on the stand at Borders and am intrigued.  Seems more fit for a bicyclist like me.  I’m not going for speed here.  I need tips on commuting, rides under 100 miles, accessories that make sense, how other ordinary folks are passionate about riding but still willing to wave to you as you pass on a country road.  But there’s still enough talk of derailleurs and cranks to perhaps satisfy the more mechanically inclined.

I hope the magazine is a success.  Print rags are a hard business in these electronic times.  I’m ordering a subscription.  Maybe you should too.  Check it out at www.bicycletimesmag.com.

I love my in-laws dearly, but I think I would have skipped our Labor Day Weekend visit had I known what I was going to come home with.  We are still recuperating, but back at work full-time and today Maude and I finally found the energy to venture out on the bikes.  I think we’ll do better tomorrow.  We are hoping to muster the energy for at least 40 miles on Saturday.  Only 2 weekend rides left before Great Pumpkin weekend.  This setback has us both nervous, but we’re going to give it all we can.

In the mean time…politics…my mother attended Saturday’s “March on Washington.”  We aren’t speaking…not really speaking anyway.  We can’t talk about much of anything anymore except landscaping, gardens, work, her golf outings.  I am so sad at how our differences have come between us.  We are alike in many ways…personality, physical traits…and yet, our view of the world and what is worth fighting for, so different.  I feel horribly slighted by the things she embraces; the people she follows.  It seems such a narrow view of humankind.

The things Mom tried to teach me growing up, it seems, I took all too literally for her taste.  Especially the pieces about love and leaving the world a better place than you found it.  I don’t know…I try to be bigger than it all…try not to be arrogant in my thinking; try to overlook, talk around, not push buttons, avoid hot topics, realize I cannot change her opinions…all in the name of having a relationship, whatever you may call this relationship now, with my mother.  But I miss connection, understanding.  I wish for a time when our moments together weren’t carefully navigated.

Truly, this is the way it is for me with all my family members.  And the fact that I am the common denominator is not lost on me.  Still, my heart, my faith, tells me not to compromise my values, my belief system.  I hope not to make a difference by arguing a point yet again with my mother but rather by simply living my life.

As Emily Saliers wrote:

“Let it be me…this is not a fighting song…Let it be me…not a wrong for a wrong…Let it be me…If the world is night…Shine my life like a light.”