I have a dear friend whom I’ve come to think of as the younger sister that nature didn’t give me.  We met through our sons, as many close friendships start.  They were a match from the start.   They met in pre-school and were like brothers  Both were only children, two highly intelligent little boys with huge, vivid imaginations interested in most of the same things. They both loved sports, though they were too young to be enrolled in anything organized yet.  Several weeks into the school year C’s grandma stopped me on the way in to pick up A to arrange for a play date on Saturday.   We went to their house and the boys played while Grandma and I got acquainted.  Her husband was in and out doing this errand and that.  After a few hours A was finally worn out and we left.   On Monday I picked up A and asked him about his day.  C wasn’t in school that day because his grandpa had died.  I was shocked because we had just met him two days before and I was sure that A had not understood, so when we got home I called C’s house and his mom confirmed the bad news.  He had died suddenly of a heart attack in his sleep the morning before. .I arranged to pick up C so they could go make funeral arrangements.  Somehow we instantly formed a family that day.  The boys spent as much time with me as they did at C’s house.  We took day trips together and spent family celebrations at each other’s houses.

    When they were old enough we signed them up to play t-ball together.  C went to soccer camp with A.  They were both cub scouts together, though I had to sign A up in a different city so they could be together.  Sports camps, cub scout camps, swimming lessons, They did it all like brothers.  They we moved away.  My marriage had broken up again and we’d been through hell.  We moved 2000 miles to live with a boyfriend I had met during my first divorce. Then we briefly moved back and things had changed.  I’d been ill while we were away and A spent two months living with my boyfriend.  I thought they had been bonding, but A had formed a pretty strong hatred of my boyfriend and didn’t let it show.  He was different, more sullen and uncomfortable.  He still felt his strong bond with C, but C had friends at school that A didn’t know and had a hard time fitting in with.  As his discomfort grew it was harder for him to be comfortable going to school.  He literally saw the germs crawling on the lockers and desks, anything touched by other students.  As the problems developed I tried explaining them to my friend, but though she is also highly intelligent she could not relate. 

    Financial problems led us to a choice, back to my boyfriend or back to my ex-husband?  A surprisingly chose back to my boyfriend.  So back we went, 2000 miles from everyone we knew and loved. 

    Now that we live so far apart we don’t see each other so much, but I talk to C’s mom occasionally.  The two boys who started out growing up so much alike have taken much different paths.  C graduated from high school this year and is going on to college.  A has been homeschooled since eighth grade and is not comfortable with the idea of taking a class to get his GED, though he could have taken it a year ago.  When I talk to C’s mom she worries because she remembers that little boy who was so outgoing and gregarious and can’t apply the description of him now and his quirks to that memory.  She is full of suggestions, but they involve a level of comfort that he is just not ready for.  She doesn’t hear the accomplishments in my telling her he went inside Walmart or the book store, because she doesn’t see that he’s been held back from doing those things for so long.  It’s hard to relate the progress, because she didn’t understand the digress.  The rest of my family is the same way.  They pull out the “you’re the mom, make him do it” argument and can’t understand why that won’t fix it.  I get “his hair is too long, he needs a haircut” without realizing that part of this is an overriding fear of having a scissors anywhere near his head and to him it’s like being attacked in an alley by a knife wielding thug, even though he knows his mother would not let the barber hurt him.  The fact that none of them have seen him since he was five feet tall and he’s now six foot six and out weighs me doesn’t help.  I guess there something magical about being a mom that I didn’t get and what I say is just “magically” supposed to happen. I think that’s what’s the most frustrating to me.  That the people I love most and should be able to turn to for support just don’t get it.