My Mom Still Yells About the Guy Who Dumped Me 12 Years Ago, And I Get It Now
Last Sunday we were sorting old boxes in my mom’s garage for her upcoming move, when she stuck her hand into a box of tangled Christmas lights, pulled out my beat-up college yearbook, and flipped right to the page with my ex’s senior portrait. A broken bulb poked her thumb, she sucked the tiny drop of blood off while staring at his face, and then just started in: “That little weasel. I still cross the whole aisle when I see him at the grocery store. If he ever so much as waves at you, I’m knocking his stupid Oakleys right off his face.”
I’m 34 now. I haven’t spoken to that guy in over a decade. I can barely remember what his voice sounds like, and I’m pretty sure he got fat and moved to Indianapolis for an insurance job. I used to tease mom for this, back when I was younger and thought grown adults were supposed to let things go. “Mom, it’s fine,” I’d say. “I got over it before you did. I’m happy, it’s no big deal.” I thought she was just one of those overprotective moms who couldn’t see I wasn’t a kid anymore. That was before I had my own 7-year-old, and I got that gut punch of rage that doesn’t go away, even when you know it’s irrational.
It happened last month, actually. Another mom texted me a blurry photo from the bus stop: my boy, sitting in the gravel, knee all scraped up, because a 10-year-old bully pushed him down and stole his pack of Sour Patch Kids. I was in the drive-through line at Starbucks, waiting for my oat milk latte, and my hands started shaking so bad I dropped my phone in the cup holder. I almost rear-ended the minivan in front of me because I couldn’t remember how to hit the brake. All I could think was I need to get over there right now and pick my kid up, and then what? I don’t know, I thought about dragging that kid to his mom by his backpack, or yelling at her in front of the whole bus stop, even though I know that’s crazy. Even though I’ve commented on local parent groups before about how we shouldn’t go after other people’s kids for stupid playground scuffles. When it’s your kid? None of that rational stuff matters.
My husband picked him up that day, and when they got home, my boy was fine. He washed the gravel off, put a dinosaur Band-Aid on, and wanted chicken nuggets for dinner. But I sat at the kitchen table the whole time, my jaw tight, and I could not relax. My husband said, “Breathe, it’s not that big of a deal. Kids fight.” And I just stared at him like he’d grown a second head. How can it not be a big deal?
I was at a birthday cookout a couple weeks after that, and my dad’s friend was talking about his 26-year-old daughter who got screwed over by her fiancé. Guy drained their joint bank account and ran off with a girl from his gym. The dad, who’s this soft-spoken retired mailman who never yells at anyone, leaned over to me and said, “If I see him anywhere, I’m gonna knock him on his ass. I don’t care if I go to jail for it. Doesn’t matter she’s old enough to drink, doesn’t matter she can afford a lawyer. She’s my kid. Nobody gets to do that to her and walk away.” I nodded, because I got it. I really got it.
I used to think the whole thing was just parents seeing their kids as perpetual toddlers, that we can’t accept they’re grown up and can handle their own problems. But that’s not it, not really. It’s that we carry every version of them with us, all the time. When I look at my 7-year-old, I don’t just see a 7-year-old who likes Minecraft and drawing dinosaurs. I see the 2-pound preemie they pulled out of me 7 weeks early, that I couldn’t hold for 3 days. I see the 2-year-old who ran away from me in the grocery store parking lot, and I thought I’d never see him again, my heart was beating so hard I thought I’d die. I see the 4-year-old who cried for 20 minutes because a sparrow hit our window and died, and he wanted to bury it in the backyard with his favorite toy truck. All those little, soft, vulnerable versions of him are still right there, in my head, in my bones. When someone hurts the 7-year-old he is now, it hurts every single one of those little kids I’ve loved before. That’s why the rage doesn’t go away.
For my mom, when that ex hurt me at 22, she didn’t just see 22-year-old me. She saw 3-year-old me who fell off my tricycle and cried into her apron. She saw 12-year-old me who came home from school crying because the popular girls said my braces were ugly. When someone hurts me now, at 34, that little 12-year-old girl she loved so much gets hurt all over again, too. That’s why she still crosses the street to avoid him. It’s not that she thinks I can’t take care of myself. It’s that she still cares for that little girl, too.
It’s awkward sometimes, right? I’ve been that mom side-eyeing the bully’s mom at the bus stop, even after she came over with chocolate chip cookies and apologized. I know I was cold, I know I should have been nicer, but I couldn’t make my face soften. I still catch myself thinking snarky things about her, even though the bullying stopped months ago. It’s not rational. It’s not pretty. It’s just how it is.
Last night my kid came home from school and said a boy in his art class called his dinosaur drawing dumb. I knelt down and told him his drawing was awesome, and I put it on the fridge, and I had to bite my tongue so hard I tasted blood not to email his teacher first thing this morning. Thirty years from now, when he’s 37, if someone hurts him, I’ll still be that 64-year-old lady who wants to knock whoever did it right on their butt. I don’t think that’s overreacting. I just think that’s what it is to love a kid. The rage doesn’t have an expiration date. No matter how big they get. (Word count: 1182)
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