The landline was ringing when I walked in the house yesterday. I almost didn’t answer. I’m sure I sounded exasperated when I picked up.
“Mrs. Hellman, this is Mrs. Yule, Marsden’s guidance counselor. Is this a bad time?”
“No,” I lied. “Is everything okay?”
Mrs. Yule had called to let me know that she had just spoken with Marsden and was deeply concerned. The emphasis she put on the word deeply was drenched in judgment.
I don’t trust or like Mrs. Yule. I think she’s more interested in her own achievements than actually helping the kids. When we met with her last spring, she was all smiles, but the authenticity of her smiles was betrayed by the road map of chiseled frown lines around her mouth. “It’s come to my attention that Marsden hasn’t visited any colleges,” she said. “This is very unusual for our students who are planning to attend college next year.”
She told me that some of their students start visiting schools when they are freshmen in high school, a few even in eighth grade, although she said she discourages starting that early, but you can’t quell some of the more eager and ambitious students. You know how it is. Most of their students start seriously looking during the second half of their junior year. By November of senior year, they should be culling their list and working on their essay. Mrs. Yule then “refreshed my memory” of the deadlines that she suspected Marsden would miss and had missed and queried as to why he hadn’t taken the SAT or the ACT yet. She rattled off a list of prestigious colleges and universities her students have gotten accepted to. Mrs. Yule informed me that she’s not only placed students in American colleges, but in schools around the globe including Abu Dhabi University. She sounded like some frat boy bragging about sexual conquests. I hope Marsden doesn’t brag about his sexual conquests. I doubt he’s had any sexual conquests to brag about. He surely doesn’t have the energy or time for sex. Between school and naps and smoking, his schedule is rather full.
Mrs. Yule is deeply concerned about Marsden’s grades. “A rather lackluster transcript,” she sighed. “What about extra-curriculars?”
“Is sleep considered an extracurricular?” I asked Mrs. Yule. I could feel the tension rising. Marsden was going to be the one who screws up her sterling record of getting students placed at prestigious universities. I was thinking about how frustrated she must be. I was honestly more concerned about how Marsden’s lassitude was going to affect Mrs. Yule than how it was going to impact him.
“Maybe he should consider taking a gap year,” she suggested. “There are some terrific gap year programs that I can recommend.”
“He said he wants to go to college next year,” I replied. Then I explained to her that I can’t push him. I told her that Marsden is a self-starter, he just takes a long time to get started.
“Then perhaps he isn’t actually a self-starter. Most of the self-starters I see are much more proactive than Marsden,” Mrs. Yule said. I could hear her trying not to sound condescending. I hate the sound of someone trying not to sound condescending. I started to get reactive. I wanted to condescend to her condescension and sound less condescending than she did while doing it.
I paced my words and explained to Mrs. Yule that there are different kinds of self-starters—yes, of course there are the proactive, motivated self-starters, who fit the conventional self-starter mold, but there are also the slow-to-start self-starters. “They are the slow cookers of self-starters.” I explained that “Marsden just needs a bit more time to marinate.”
But she misheard me and asked, “Did you just say he needs more time to masturbate?”
What? No! Did I?
I denied it in full. I tried to make a joke out of it and place the blame on her. “Mrs. Yule, I most certainly didn’t. Excuse me for asking, but where is your head at?”
She was not amused and ended our conversation abruptly. By the end of the school day, I suspect Mrs. Yule had had told her fellow administrators about our conversation. She’s probably working on a book: Parents Say the Darndest Things.
The truth is Marsden has been a slow-to-start self-starter. It took him longer than most to join the post-utero world and from his first hour of life, he has looked drowsy. Beautiful, tired boy that he is. It seems like a genetic impossibility that I ended up with this sleepy mono-syllabic son. There is nothing in my DNA that doesn’t scream chatty insomniac. Even Elliot, for all his faults—if he actually has faults other than leaving me for Midge—is engaged and talkative and energetic. Somehow the two of us created this silent, sleepy, gorgeous giant, whose motto in life seems to be “the path of least resistance.” How can there be so few words in that six-foot-two body? What is in there if not words?
“Yup.” “Nup.” (Not even a full “Nope.”) “Sure.” And recently, “Dunno.”
When Marsden got home from school, I told him Mrs. Yule had called.
“Marsden, do you want to go to college next year?”
“Sure.”
“Do you want to look at some schools?”
“Okay.”
“Are there schools you’re thinking about?”
“Not really.”
“Do you think you’d like to go to a large university, like UMASS, or a small more intimate school?”
“Dunno.”
“Someplace rural with cows or in a city with cars?”
“Dunno.”
“Close to home or far away?”
He shrugged.
“In states that begin with an A or an M?”
“Yup. Sure.”
“A and M or A or M?”
“Mom!”
“Should I set up some school visits?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
He will get there. I have confidence in him. My beautiful boy is a self-starter.