On summer and shakespeare
here's to a short trip down memory lane
I did a little editing on an old post from a previous blog I wrote called “Life with Teenagers.” I wrote it when the kids were younger and Janyce and I were new. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in the present this week. Happy Summer.
“Do you see them yet?” I say to my spouse Janyce while pushing the red cooler bag on the ground with my foot. I am standing with a wide stance on a small square of lawn I have just claimed, shifting my weight from one hip to the other. To my left, a young couple is eating slices of pizza on a multicolor yarn blanket. Behind me, five people with low folding beach chairs start setting them up all in a line. Janyce is standing as well, looking around for signs of the others.
“Here comes one,” she says. I turn quick to see my oldest teen’s trademark lumbering walk as he makes his way up the paved path in the distance.
“Mom, we’re here. Where are you? Dad is a grouch,” reads the text on my phone.
Before I can reply, I spot the other two at the far end of the lawn way up near the stage. My ex-husband Jim has a chair strapped to his back, a cooler in one hand, a chair in the other. My youngest son stands three feet in front of him, scanning the crowd and also holding a folding chair in each hand. Even from a distance I can see the scowl on Jim’s face. I wave.
We’re all gathering as a family in the Boston Common to watch Othello during a free performance of Shakespeare in the Park.
“Mom, do we have enough room here?” says my oldest teen collapsing onto his back on the lawn where we are standing.
“Dad is here now with the chairs. Are you hungry?” I say, already unzipping the cooler bag and fishing my hand inside to grab one of the cellophane wrapped sandwiches. The sun has now dipped below the tree line, lighting up the hazy summer clouds in a wash of pink and gold.
“Wow, will you look at how beautiful it is out,” I say to Janyce, as she is negotiating all of us to move so that the short-chair people behind us won’t be blocked by our expanding party. I wave a sandwich over my teen’s outstretched body.
“Mom, I don’t want it now. I have a stomach ache,” he says.
“Did you eat today? What did you eat?” I say.
“I’m not hungry,” he says and looks at his phone.
“I bet it’s not about hunger at all,” I say to Janyce under my breath and motion my head in his direction.
“You have to eat something, just have a half sandwich,” I say and push an unwrapped roast beef and cheddar in front of his face.
“Easy now,” says Janyce, putting her hand on my arm. It’s her way of gently telling me to stop.
Jim arrives and sits down on the grass, bending his body in a U shape, legs tucked up near his chin.
“Don’t you want a chair? I say.
“No, I’m fine. I want the grass,” he says. “The traffic sucked.”
“Have a sandwich,” I say, tossing one to him, and one to Janyce on her lap, and another to my youngest teen as he settles into his chair.
The Shakespeare Players take turns on the stage for hours as the sky turns royal blue and then to inky black. Jim and the boys stare ahead rapt, occasionally nudging each other in the arm at a familiar line or soliloquy from Iago. I’m not paying attention fully because I have my own soliloquies running in my head. I am replaying the argument my oldest teen and I had this morning about his girlfriend. “Mom, just shut it, okay?” he said to me after I had finished my latest lecture on what constitutes a healthy relationship.
“No, it’s not unfair, and it’s not selfish to tell her you are busy at camp for a week. You don’t have to take on her problems,” I said.
“You don’t get it, mom. I can’t be like that. I can’t not care,” he said.
And maybe he has a point. When is it caring about someone else and their problems and when is it standing up for yourself?
I start unpacking the container of chocolate chip cookies and the white frosted cake, spreading them out on the lawn.
I mean, if Othello can’t tell what is real and what is not, why do I expect my teen to know the difference either?
The cool night wind at 11:30 pm starts to swell, bending and swaying the branches of the trees over the moonlit lawn.
“What time is it?” says the younger teen.
“It’s late,” I say.
All five of us are stumbling behind Jim with his lawn chair strapped to his back again as he leads the way through crowds of milling people to the underground parking garage.
“Mom, really? You had to laugh in the middle of the death scene,” says the younger teen.
“Sorry bud, but it was funny. They were all stabbing each other and then I looked over at Janyce and she had her head back and her eyes closed.”
We’re teetering along now in sleepy single file when I notice my oldest teen beside me, preoccupied by his own thoughts and twisting his long fingers into a knot.
I’m walking the line in my mind between giving more advice and meddling. One push too far and I lose his trust in me, and stop being someone he can talk to. Not enough pushing and I can’t sleep at night.
“Honey?” I say.
“What IS IT mom?” he says.
“This is the night. That either makes me or fordoes me quite.”
“Nothing,” I say.
Instead, I turn to smile at Janyce and she gives my hand a squeeze.