CALLS FROM MY SON AND AN UNDERWEAR SCARE

I am not one of those people who, when the phone rings, will knock over furniture to get to it before it switches over to voicemail. I will admit to occasionally checking the Caller ID to see who is calling before deciding whether to pick up. If the display says something like, Market Research Inc., they get the voicemail. If its an 800 number…voicemail. If it says, IRS… Actually, if it says IRS I answer it in a disguised voice and tell them I’ve never heard of Brad Behan but that I am sure he must have moved away to Kyrgyzstan and changed his name to Mikhail or Boris or Vladimir so they should just give up trying to reach him.

On the other hand, I do my best to never miss a call from my son. Brandon is into his senior year in college and I feel blessed every time he calls me to talk. And for some reason he’s been calling me quite often lately. I love that. He doesn’t even need any money. I love that even more. And he wants me to come visit him. I love that the most.

You have to understand, he’s been away three years now and is pretty well adjusted to being on his own. I suppose as a parent one should feel good when a child successfully makes the transition to being out in the world on his own. Our job, after all, is to bring them up in a way they can handle the adjustment and succeed without us. But my son has always been exceptionally adept at managing himself “out there.” Even though he is 21 years old now being a dad allows me to remember as if it were just yesterday the time I walked him to his first day at elementary school. While most of the other parents were taking their kids all the way into the classroom to drop them off – the kids crying at the thought of separation, hanging onto mom or dad like a lobbyist clutching a congressman – my 6-year-old son stopped halfway across the schoolyard. It had only been a short walk from our home to the school and he was already quite familiar with the playground since we had made a habit of going there often to slide down the slide and climb on the jungle gym. The outside of the school was familiar territory. But inside? I felt like we were crossing an ocean and I was about to leave him on some distant shore. Anyway, as we approached the school he stopped suddenly, looked up at me, pulled his hand free from mine and said, “Okay daddy, I know how to get there from here. You don’t need to come inside.”

At that moment, part of me died. It was a place previously unknown to me, hidden deep down inside. Even in that instant I knew the feeling was part of parenthood, that there would be more moments like it in the years to come.

By the time he graduated high school he had been to many far away lands, several without me along with him, and had already shown he was one of those kids who could get on a plane to anywhere and adjust within a couple days. He’d worked at a leadership camp in the mountains one summer. He’d taken mission trips to Mexico. He’d been to Trinidad and Tobago. Each time on departure day he’d given me a hug, said he’d call when he got there, and took off on his own with no evident fear or sense of doubt.

I remember taking him to college his freshman year, and watching him squirm with some degree of embarrassment as I insisted on helping carrying his stuff into the dorm. Other dads were doing the same thing with their kids. There was nothing weird about it but he was ready to be on his own. After a few arguments during the move-in, I pretty much stayed outside in the parking lot with his mom and waited to be needed. The odds were better that he would have come out and asked for his childhood teddy bear than ask for any help. From me anyway. He did come get Lucy once or twice to ask her opinion on things like bedding and the such. A little while later, after an awkward hug between the two of us (when had a hug become awkward?) I left him there and we started the long drive home, Lucy crying openly most of the way and me more broken than I’d ever felt in my life. I moped around our home for weeks after that nearly unable to function. He connected on campus in record time. It was amazing. It took me months to brave even going into his room for fear I’d lose it completely and they’d send the men with the straight-jacket to take me away.

Two years later he spent a semester overseas. He had a couple days where he was homesick and called a bunch, then he adjusted to the new surroundings and never looked back.

Now he’s a senior and calls me almost every day. I think he even misses me. It only took three years.

Here at home his cousin my nephew has moved in and the place isn’t so quiet anymore. And there is something comfortingly reminiscent of the years with Brandon at home when I find a slice of pizza on the couch or an apple core on the carpet near the bench press in the exercise room.

The other day I found something in my underwear drawer that didn’t belong in there. I don't want to go into it here, but if you want the gory details, may I suggest you…

…click here for the unsettling details.