Pensacola

My son sped from Mobile Regional Airport, where I had arrived to from Maine, to his dorm at the University of West Florida in Pensacola.  We drove by the Spanish Fort and the naval ship USS Alabama with no intention of stopping for a visit.  After four years of being away from home, Nick was confident and comfortable driving the 75 mph speed limit in the Ram truck his father gave him as a going away to college present. 

When I first taught Nick how to drive, I didn’t let him go faster than 20 mph.  The driving teacher I hired to take him on the expressway said he drove like an old lady.  I laughed. Thankfully, my overprotective parenting didn't affect his confidence (my ex-husband always said he was more like a nurturing mother, and I was the tough-as-nails Cuban dad (during the last century, my French/Spanish father’s family had immigrated from Europe to Cuba). My ex was right, there had been times when I had had face-to-face showdowns with my son for disrespecting me during his rebellious teenage years.

But Nick was his own man now, and he intended to prove it. That night he invited his friends to meet me at the karaoke bar in downtown Pensacola. His college buddies and frat brothers with their Southern charm, pickup trucks, and raggedy blue jeans were lovers of acid rock and modern country music who said, “Yes, Ma’am” and “Nice to meet you, Ma’am.” They were also brilliant, graduating from the university with chemistry and bioengineering degrees.

The next day, Nick, his girlfriend, their gay male friend, and I hiked the grounds of the University, all protected Florida wetlands with trails, bridges, and a river my son said he canoed sometimes.  Nick’s beautiful Brazilian American girlfriend with shiny black hair, eyes, and skin was happy, chatty, and determined to start her professional life--and not pursue a graduate degree--after graduating with her bachelor’s degree that weekend. 

“You should think about whether or not your career will benefit from having an advanced degree,” I said, while we sipped beers at the distillery in downtown Pensacola.

“I don’t need one, Ana said with confidence. “I’m going to do a marketing internship, maybe at the Pentagon, and take it from there.”  She was dying to get out into the world, see it, know it, be part of it. I wondered how much of that ambitious worldliness would rub off on my son who was more of a conventional, stick-in-the-mud type who liked doing only what felt comfortable.  Ana, though, was ambitious and regal; she also held some high rank in her sorority.

“Yea, I don’t need a graduate degree either,” my son said, shirking his shoulders. He was madly in love with Anna, and she knew it.  They made a beautiful couple. Beautiful Ana and beautiful Nick with his tanned skin and chiseled physique from all his years of doing Taekwondo, which earned him a second-degree black belt.

“Well, Nick, you should think about it,” I continued, “nowadays everyone has a criminal justice degree. You might want to get some sort of forensic chemistry or biology masters to make yourself more marketable,” I said not wanting him to go back to Miami where his father lived and where his friends, who drank and drugged-and who I believed were bad influences-also lived. But I didn’t share those concerns with him.

“I’m going into the Peace Corps, and I hope I get to go somewhere in Asia,” Anthony, their gay male friend, chimed in with a broad smile and a beer mustache, which made us all laugh.

I thought it wonderful that my son and his college friends shared their dreams of the future with me on this the eve of their graduation while we all sat drinking beer at a distillery in oldtown Pensacola. To believe all would go exactly as planned was the fountain of youthful thinking; it was also the super continent of Pangaea-type dreaming, too overwhelming to consider making corrections when original plans went awry. Still, I had forgotten about the joy of believing in perfect, new beginnings, middles, and endings, especially when young.  

  

I also didn’t know what to expect from my stay with Nick on the four days I was visiting. We weren’t necessarily close.  He was moody, uptight, and serious, and during the years I raised him I was hysterical most of the time from all the stress and responsibilities of being a single parent. I knew he loved me even though he didn’t necessarily like me. I also knew he respected me and wanted my approval, which I easily granted for all the health, happiness, and wonder his new life now evoked. 

When my ex-husband, his wife, her daughter, and my daughter arrived from Miami that afternoon the dynamics changed.  My daughter, Clara, was especially distant with me even though she stayed with Nick and me in his dorm room at the university (we slept on his bunk beds while he slept on a mattress on the floor). 

When we went to dinner the next day, Clara didn’t sit with me at the restaurant.  She preferred to sit by her stepsister who had more confidence than she did.  I argued with her about it in the car.

“Be your own person,” I said. “Why do you trail after that girl as if you are not good enough to think or speak for yourself?” 

“I don’t trail after anybody, and its none of your business, anyway” she screamed at me.

“Yes, you do. You chase after her as if you don’t know what to do or say.”

“Just shut up, shut up already.”

"When are you going to realize how beautiful and perfect you are?” I asked, dejected.

“I don’t want hear it,” she said, slamming the car door and walking towards the dorm with my son, leaving me devastated by our argument.

When I left Miami for Maine four years ago, Clara was sixteen and my son was on his way too college. My ex-husband had offered me a way out of my oppressive single state of motherhood, which entailed three jobs and endless chores–cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping… He said he would stay with Clara if I wanted to start again somewhere else.  I immediately accepted his surprising offer even without knowing where I would go (eventually I decided on Maine because I had seen many of its lighthouses in the movies). He even gave me a couple thousand dollars so that I could start again.  Maybe it was guilt that made him do it and his obvious absence from the kids' lives while they were growing up, but I was grateful for his offer and his money.   

I couldn’t be a single mom anymore, a scandalous decision for those who heard about my plans to move to Maine alone. By then, I felt angina-like pains and palpitations in my heart every night, which never offered any sleep because of my insomnia. For ten years I backtracked and tried to reverse bad habits I was prone to repeat as a product of two violent and narcissistic parents. There were a series of behaviors I kept my attention on: Don’t scream at the kids too much. Don’t call them names. Apologize. Explain. Give them more freedom and independence. Trust them more often.  Don't be so overprotective....  Really, I was exhausted and mentally drained from keeping track of my efforts along with working and paying bills I could hardly make anymore.

In the end, I tried to be the best mother I could and was now devastated by the thought that maybe I had not done any better than my mean parents who called me names and hit me at the slightest provocation; maybe they had tried to do better than their own parents and had failed just the same. 

I immediately decided that once again I would explain to beautiful Clara, with the strawberry blond hair, hazel eyes, and hour-glass figure that I did my best as a single mother; that I left because I knew I could not physically or emotionally do it anymore; that she needed to become more independent, which I didn’t seem to allow with my over protection of her; that her father wanted to be the primary parent he had never been and very much desired to be while she was still young and living at home; and that I would always be there and available for her by traveling to her on holidays and special occasions, which I was already doing, and, of course by cellphone. I realized that maybe she would never forgive me and even so I had no regrets about my action because all my decisions came from the heart, even the one to run away from home when I was 45 years old.

But even with the lows and devastating epiphanies I experienced on that trip to Pensacola there were many great moments with my children, like our lounging around like human-size ceramic figures on the hot and white sandy beaches of the Gulf of Mexico; splashing in its crystalline waves; attending my son's graduation and after party at the beach house where we drank cold beer, danced, laughed, reminisced, toasted new beginnings; spying the Blue Angels, which were based in town, zipping across perfect blue skies; and eating Southern breakfasts with grits, eggs, bacon, buttermilk biscuits and gravy every morning.