At six feet and six inches he fills the doorway as he leans against it as if for support. His arms hang loose as his muscled shoulders droop. His head rests against the wood grain and he does not muster a smile. I fight the urge to run to him and wrap that enormous sixteen year old frame in my arms to hold him close and whisper soft assurances that surely everything will be alright. I am his mother after all. The pain that I see in the squint of his eyes and feel in the way he rubs the heel of his hand savagely against his cheeks to wipe away the tears is almost more than I can bear. But I don't go to him. I only wait. Silently. I have learned this after a few painful brushoffs and have come to accept it as my role.
He says very little. They're taking a break. This boy. The other boy. He's been hanging around more and more. It's become clear that she's interested. I realize that the moment he tells me this is the moment she turns ugly to me. Her considerable beauty and sweetness melt away and I see her for what I think she must have been all along. She doesn't love my son. She doens't love him the way he loves her. How is that possible?
I tell him I love him. I tell him he's amazing and that there will be girls lined around the block for him but my words fall flat to the floor before they even reach his ears. I watch them fall and am powerless to scoop them back up. Words don't matter. His heart is broken.
He sat quietly, silently at the breakfast tablea few hours later making figure eights with his spoon in his oatmeal. He went to the computer and with a few clicks her pictures were gone from his facebook account and he was suddenly "not in a relationship". I remind him to be kind but I know that I don't have to. Because his heart toward her is kind. Because the clicks that so quickly erase a relationship in cyberspace hold very little power over his heart. I wonder if he knew this before. I think it must be something he is learning just now.
As I watch him sling his heavy pack over his shoulder and stride to his car I am flooded with memories of my first heartbreak. The pit in a place inside me I had been unaware of until that day making itself known. The overwhelming feeling that nothing would ever be the same again. The stabbing pain of seeing him again and not being able to sling an arm over his neck and pull him close. I wonder if my son will feel these things today. Wonder how he feels even now as he starts and revs the engine leaving home behind in a gentle cloud of dust.
I remember though too the day I met his father. I remember the smile that played across his face setting his dark features aglow. I still see that smile when he looks across the room at me at the end of a long day. Things begin to shift back into perspective. My son is sixteen and it would be unreasonable to expect him to find that fabled "right one" without a heartbreak or two. Truth be told his now ex girlfriend is a wonderful girl who shared a beautiful first experience in dating with him. It didn't work. Sometimes it doesn't. That's okay. I have only to roll over and look at the face next to me slumbering sweetly on his pillow to remember why.
