The Longest Wait

A young boy with ADHD struggles to wait for attention from his Mother who suffers from depression

                Going to the woods frees my soul. Here I can run. Here I can yell with joy, or sing as loud as I want.

                In the woods I am not waiting.

                My dad takes me to the woods a lot. It is easy enough. We live in a tiny town perched on the edge of a huge lake and surrounded by miles of forests.

                My dad calls the lake Gichi Gumi. I don’t know why. But I just call it Lake Superior, liver everyone else. Everyone except my dad, that is.

                Today the woods are cool, quiet. I decide to be quiet too. Sometimes my dad will try to teach me a science lesson in the woods. But not today. Today he’s picking up large pieces of birch tree bark.

                “We’ll make boats when we get home.” My dad says as he picks up a large piece of bark. It is completely circular, the middle has simply rotted and fallen out from the middle of the fallen limb.

                I didn’t know how to make a boat out of Birch bark. And I doubted that my dad knew either. But that didn’t matter to him, or "really" to me. I looked around and spotted an even larger piece of bark. “This will be my boat,” I said, picking it up. “I bet I can get an entire squad on this boat.”

                I have several squads of army men. I won some in arcade games when we visited a city with a bowling alley. I bought some with my chore money. I get ten cents every time I feed a dog. We have three dogs; they eat twice a day. It’s a good deal. And of, course, I got some money from the tooth fairy. I put the squads around the house for protection against intruders. My dad said it was hardly necessary. No one remembered the last time anyone other than Jake had tried to get into someone’s house. And when Jake did that, people just usually walked him back to his own house where he could “dry out”

                Jake spent a lot of time drying out, but people said he never stayed dry for very long. I don’t really know what they mean because I never him wet. He doesn’t even swim.

                I loaded my Birch bark specimen into my backpack, picked up a nice walking stick, and headed up the mountain side.

                When we got home I discovered that my dad actually did know how to make a boat out of birch bark, with popsicle sticks. With three boats built and manned with squadrons, I was ready to put them to the test.

                But the test would have to wait. We were home now, and at home we waited. The bathtub was upstairs.

                My dad headed downstairs. That usually meant he was going to clean our spotless basement. Again. Or maybe he would stop at the landing, go outside, and mow the lawn.

                I rearranged the squadrons on the boats. Twice. Then I built with my Legos. I took my army base to the basement where my dad was working on his computer. He was a teacher, but he was on the computer a lot.

                “It’s summer, dad.”

                ‘And so it is.” He closed the computer and examined the Lego army base. “Very nicely fortified,” he said.

                I pointed to the top of the base, “these are the main missiles,” I said. I then explained the details of the base. Dad always listened as I explained my Legos.

                “Why don’t we take a walk around the block?” he asked.

                He meant that we would walk around the block whether I wanted to go or not. But I might as well. I couldn’t test the boats yet anyway. Of course, Dad would bring a bag and pick up litter and tell me how plastic bits would get in the water and fish might eat them. I knew the whole story, even how some of the plastic would get into the lake and through the lakes and rivers and end up in the ocean in what dad called a garbage patch.

                None of it really made sense. But I didn’t litter. I like fish and my dad had been right before.

                Sometimes dad would talk. And sometimes he wouldn’t. Really, I preferred if he did. I know it seems like I ignored most of what he said and just let it pass with a “whatever.” But I’d rather listen to him talk than listen to my own thoughts bouncing around in my head like rubber balls in a small wooden room. I don’t know why I thought my head was a wooden room, I just did.

                But today he wasn’t talking.

                Today I wondered why we couldn’t go upstairs to test the birch bark boats in the bath tub. My dad said a train wreck in the attic wouldn’t wake up my mother. If a train wreck in the attic wouldn’t wake her up, how would birch bark boats in a bath tub wake her up?

                I didn’t know how loud a train wreck in the attic would be, but it would have to be loud. I wondered how the trains would get in the attic in the first place, or if the house would fall down. Would the house fall down one piece at a time, or all at once? How much of it would be recycled? Dad said we should recycle more. Or reuse? Would we build a new house out of the same old house? Would we use the train wreckage? What if the house fell down with mom in it? If she wouldn’t wake up for a train wreck in the attic, would she wake up if the house was falling down?

                Would dad say it was ok to wake up mom if the house was falling down? Or there was a train wreck in the attic? Wouldn’t the train wreck cause a fire?

                I decided I would count my steps.

                One, two, three, four.

                Dad said counting my steps would help settle the thoughts bouncing around in my head.

                Five, six, seven.

                Sometimes it worked better, sometimes not so well. What about the other people on the train in our attic? What would happen to them in the train wreck?

                I started counting again

                One, two, three, four…

                I leaned over a picked up a piece of plastic for the recycle bag. I was dropping it in when my dad stopped me. “No, K-cups go in the trash. The mesh inside and coffee residue and…”

                I put it in the trash bag. Even if mom did wake up and I could go upstairs with my birch bark boats she wouldn’t come upstairs to see if they float. Dad would probably play for a little while, then he would go downstairs to check on mom. I didn’t really know why he had to check on mom. I could tell him exactly what he’d find when he got downstairs: mom on the couch, watching television and drinking coffee.

                Everyday.

                It took hours for mom to drink coffee. Dad could drink a cup of coffee in five minutes flat, less if he was late for work. Mom couldn’t get through one in an hour if her life depended on it.

                It’s a good thing her life didn’t depend on it.

                If mom wasn’t on the couch, she’d be at the microwave reheating her coffee. But usually she just waited for dad to go by, then she’d hold up her coffee cup and say it was cold. Dad would reheat it for her. So he was really checking on her coffee, no her. I guess.

                I spied another K-cup and another. “if you use these in the kitchen, why are they all over the sidewalk,” I asked.

                ‘I don’t know. Maybe the wind blew them out of a trash bag.” That sounded reasonable, so that topic could be considered finished. For now, anyway.

                We had three full bags. One was for trash, one for recycling, and one for cans and bottles. I always worked hardest to find cans and bottles that would give us ten cents each. Dad let me have the money. Then I could get more army squadrons. Or Legos. Or maybe a power ranger suit. Or a nerf sword. A nerf gun was out of the question.

                I didn’t really know something could be in or out of a question, but I knew if my dad said it was out of the question, I wasn’t going to get it. But maybe I could get a clone trooper outfit. Or candy.

                We walked up the steps to the house. The mailbox was empty. This was dad’s trick to knowing if mom was awake. If she’s collected the mail, clearly she’s awake. Since it’s usually the first thing she does when she gets p, a full mailbox means she still asleep.

                Flawless.

                Except for Sundays. And Holidays. Then it was sheer guess work.

                Today was Friday. The mail was gone. She was up.

                I barged into the house.  

                “Mommy!”

                “What sweetheart?”

                I ran into the living room. She had coffee. The television was on. “Do you want to see my army base?” I asked. She kind of nodded but didn’t say anything, “Dad and I made birch bark boats, I’ve got some squadrons on them, want to come test them?”

                “In a minute,” she said, “in a minute.”

                In kindergarten, a minute didn’t really last that long. But mom’s minutes were really long. They could last all day. I got up on the couch, “Dad and I got a lot of recyclable cans and bottles,” I said, “so I can get another squadron. I’ll go get the boats, so we can play.” I jumped off the couch and mom slowly got up and walked into the kitchen. I rushed past her, but I could what she told dad.

                “He comes in and wants me to do everything at once,” she told him. “I can’t do it. I have to be able to breathe.”

                I didn’t hear what dad said. I ran out the door and got the boats. Really I didn’t want mom to do everything as soon as I got home. Just one thing. But she didn’t.

                I ran back inside with the boats. “See mom, we got the bark in the woods,” I said as she walked back to the couch.

                “Oh, that’s very nice.”

                “Want to come up to the bath tub and see if they float?”

                “Not now honey, in a few minutes.”

A few minutes was even longer than a minute. Sometimes a few minutes never ended.

She added, “I just want to finish my coffee.”

I knew that was coming. But I ran upstairs with my boats anyway. Dad seemed to be able to carry a coffee mug around the house. I’d find them sometimes in the den or the playroom. Mom’s never left the first floor, never went anywhere but the kitchen and the living room.  I went back downstairs without the boats, “Hey mom, I saw some blueberries ready to pick, can we pick them.”

“Later, honey, please just let me drink my coffee.”

I slinked back up the stairs. Yesterday dad had told me to tell mom about the blueberries. Blueberries were her favorite, and he had planted the bushes just for her. She used to be so eager to pick them. Even I remember that. So I told her yesterday, but she said we’d do it later and later never came. I don’t even think she went outside yesterday. I

I hope she’d do it today. Dad said it would be good for her to get outside. I heard him from the stairs tell her it was a beautiful day and we could all go for a walk later in the afternoon. She didn’t respond. I could imagine her holding up her coffee mug to say she had to finish her coffee.

I started the bathtub water. Dad told me not to use a lot, just enough to see if they float. “Water is a precious resource, he told me. I thought precious meant rare. It wasn’t rare. The lake was huge; the river was full. But he said that was because of where we lived, that a lot of places didn’t have enough water. So I cut the water off when I thought I had enough to cover a boat if it sank.

I heard dad on the stairs. Then suddenly he was looking over my shoulder. “They float,” he said, “I thought they would.”

“Is mom coming up.”

“I don’t know; I’ll go check on her.”

But we both knew she wasn’t. And we both knew what he’d find when he got downstairs to check on her. And we both knew we could wait all day. So I loaded my squadrons in back into the boats and sailed them to the beachhead at the end of the tub, where they attacked their archenemy.  Dad came back.

“She’s not coming up, is she?” He only sighed so there was no need to ask again. My dad leaned against the tub and looked in. “See,” I said, “they can hold the squadrons but the soldiers keep falling over because the boats are really rocky.” I made an extra wave in the tub.

“They’ll all get sea sick.” He said, placing a soldier who had fallen out of a boat back in the boat. “I guess the tanks don’t really fit, do they.”

“No, not with the soldiers already in the boat.” Then I looked up at my dad, “does she know you're waiting, too?”

“What?”

“Mom. Does she know you’re waiting for her all the time too?” I returned to the boats and pushed another one toward the enemies on the far end of the tub. My dad looked a little confused like even he didn’t know he was waiting for her.

A boat sank under enemy fire. “Anyway, I know that you cook dinner, do the dishes and the laundry, and mow the lawn, even if she never notices.”

“She notices.” My dad looked a little uncomfortable.

“Yeah, but you're waiting for her to say thank you and I’m waiting for her to play with me. And I think we’re going to be waiting a long time.”

The last two boats sank under heavy enemy fire.

               

Author's Note

Any and all comments are greatly appreciated