I Just Want to Share

My son phoned me from work.

“Mom, hi, I’m taking a break and just read this great description. I just had to share it with you. . . .”

If he hadn’t said another word, he had already blessed me in more ways than I ever expected.

As a Mom it made my heart grow two sizes, like that old Grinch story he liked as a child.

He wanted to talk to his Mom.

After all of the things I put him through while learning about this mothering stuff. He’s lucky to be alive and I’m fortunate that he’s talking to me at all. (I’m thinking of the time I zipped his naked little body into his Dr. Denton sleepers and part of him got caught in that zipper’s nasty little teeth. A sensitive part of him. He still winces when he hears a zipper).

His words warmed me as a reader. I lived most of my life in a world of non-readers. My parents worked hard. Dad worked long hours in a steel mill; Mom’s idea of valuable reading began and ended with the Bible. My husband despised reading, it ranked right up with cleaning sink drains or taking out the garbage. Even my friends would rather watch videos than open a book. When my sons were born, the first thing I introduced them to, after diapers and mother’s milk, were words and books.

As a writer, my son’s words fell like a balm on abraded skin. We live too much of our lives in isolation. The opportunity to discuss books is like a gift from the gods. To have my own son make a special effort to call me from work and say, “I just read this great description. . . .”

I almost cried.

I remembered all of the times when he’d say a word, a perfectly placed word. Regardless of what we were in the midst of — verbal combat, cooking lessons, bedtime, or unzipping him from his pajamas -- I’d comment, “Great word. Excellent. I like that word. Perfect.”

Sometimes I’d hear him make the same comment back to me. But, it wasn’t until he called me from his job to share a descriptive passage that he made the jump into sharing written words with me.

Bless you Dean Koontz. Bless my son’s boring job that gave him time to read. And bless that unique descriptive passage that prompted him to pick up the phone.

“Listen,” he said. “Like a herd of snails headed for a gourmet restaurant.”

We laughed at the visual image of a herd of snails, of someone herding snails, of their little faces reflecting the horror of their fate, their antenna dipping low. Their even slower one-footed progress. Can you drag one foot?

The passage may not be a literary giant standing beside mutterings from Anna Karenina or Oliver Twist or Lord Polonius, but for me they are golden words.

It was a moment. An interlude in a life that passes too quickly. A speck on the grand scale of war and peace. But, it ranks up there with his first steps, first words and first car.

Someone said that just when kids get to be interesting people, they leave home. I hope my son, who has turned into a fascinating young man, will continue to call home and say, “Hey Mom, I just want to share with you.”

Happy Mothers Day! And I hope you all receive as sweet a gift as I did. "I just want to share...."