(busy work day, so no fresh writing today – just a classic post on the behavioral talking that’s we’re revisiting as Coronavirus upends our days and forces us to find a new normal.)

Maybe he’s indigested. Or bored. Maybe his soul is pained, crushed, and the only way he knows to show it is to pace, or soothe himself by sorting phonics cards into a blue plastic box over and over, or piling everyone’s folded laundry into his drawer because disorder drives him nuts.

He’s always in motion. His whole life. The cyclone inside him builds when you’re not looking, then uproots up our house entire. All a mother can do is hold on, and pick up the pieces.

And now, at age 26, at 3:15 am, his feet start their talking – and his brows, and the one-eyed squint where he thinks I can’t see him. No words. He has a few, but why bother, he must think. Words are such imperfect levers for grabbing the heart’s desire. I can feel him hesitating outside the crack in my bedroom door, his gaze burning through the night. He starts out quietly, sneaky, but every sinew is poised, ready to see if he can get away with it. Why tonight? Why now? I worry that he’s pained, but then I feel the twinkle in his eye through the sliver of hallway light, that impishness he’s never outgrown.

A mother’s work is never done, I know. It’s 3:15 am and he’s still not asleep. I didn’t hear the grind and roll of the automatic garage door opening, so he must still be inside. Is he thirsty? It couldn’t have been my homemade meatballs, or the diet breaded eggplant I so masterfully crafted to soothe his cravings within his Weight Watcher points tally. They’re a crisp bit of heaven that says “Mom triumphed! She can tame him, and herself too!” It’s my illusion, but I have to hang on to it. I have to pretend we can all be happy when feet and hands and brows replace the sound of his voice. When motion is his paragraph. When I ask “Are you all right?” sixteen times, and all I get are rote “Yes,” the same as if I asked “Did you kill your brother?” or “Do you like calves liver?”

It’s too quiet. In yet another admission I don’t run my life, he does – I pad down the stairs. Maybe he’s pop-topping the microbrews in the refrigerator again, enjoying the whoosh! of their spray like the 5-year old he is inside. Or maybe he hates his life – the maddening repetition, everyone structuring him. Maybe he knows the lie of it all – that those paid to help him sneer, treating him as a less-than, resenting that they can’t find a better job than guiding a man-boy. Maybe his turbulence is pain I can’t see, can’t feel, and he aches because he can’t tell me.

As I near the first floor landing, he rounds the corner, water cup in hand, smirking, looking tired. His eyes soften seeing that I’m not mad at him. Maybe he knows I love him, endlessly. – Maybe.