I have a penance I’m going to do for you, John. I figured out what it is. It’s not giving up coffee, like I thought it should be. It’s better. It’s something I got from Mary Magdalene and Father John of God, who taught about her at the silent retreat I went to earlier this week. She stood behind Jesus weeping, all the tears leaping from her eyes, falling copiously, like mine at the retreat when I was listening to Father talk about her.
I don’t know how to write to you. I showed a letter I wrote to you to your father, and he said it was mostly all good, but some of it was too emotional. If he read it at your age, he’d be worried about his mom. I think he was talking about the part where I said I was afraid for you, afraid you are frozen with homesickness. Sometimes it’s hard to know if what I’m expressing is about you or about me. But I’m safe here on my blog about middle aged motherhood. Even if you did have access to the internet where you are, you wouldn’t go near it.
So it’s safe for me to say, I love you, baby. I think about you every second of every day. I’m scared that this experience of going to boarding school ten hours away with 66 boys that could go all Pat Conroy on you could be permanently damaging, like going to prison is. I’m scared it will change you. Well, I know it will change you. But I’m scared it will not be for the better like I’d hoped. You’re the best, brightest boy I’ve ever known, and I love you forever and ever, like that mom in the children’s book who takes a ladder and climbs in her grown son’s room to rock him while he’s sleeping. Some people think that’s a creepy book, but not moms. Moms don’t mind being that creepy old lady.
I’m doing my penance for you. I got it from Mary Magdalene and the Stabat Mater. It’s not something anyone will ever see me doing, because it’s so very much on the inside. It’s deep, very deep. You might never appreciate it. Good! Never read this. (I don’t even need to say that. I know you won’t.)
