Pick me, Pick me!

7pm of Monday; the house was quiet and empty. D was still in the office, waiting for Luke to finish the orchestra rehearsal. My dinner done, lunch packed and kitchen all cleaned up, I was ready to resign for the day when the call came. The caller ID showed college son's number. I answered quickly out of a built-in habit, as instinctively as taking the air in and out without prompting. He rarely calls, and when he does, it is business. I prayed that it is one of those non-critical business (“can I buy a calculator”, “where is Dad” kind). The voice from the other end sounded muffled, and empty. My phone is bad. He said. That was easy, I thought, and quickly told him I would look for an old one to replace it. His response was mindless and hesitant. For someone who can't read people at all, he was a sad open book, easy to read. Something was wrong. My heart sank. “Everything ok?” Another quiet and evasive answer: It's nothing. Don't worry. I pressed on further and without much effort, the truth came. He just found out his roommates had sought for next year's apartment together, and he was not included. They lied to me. He added in a vacant tone, while a heart full – it was sorrow, rejection, a sense of failure.

What does any mother say or do in time like this? I wondered. I wished I had my mother then and there. She’d make everything ok, even my broken-hearted child less heart breaking – at least for me. But there were just he and I, but a few miles apart from each other, communing one of life’s saddest misery impossible to escape. They didn’t pick me. They don’t want me. For a brief second, I almost forgot time and space. I thought I was standing at that old kitchen, looking out of the big pane of window, and there my 5-year-old on the backyard screaming for a friend who was running away from him. It was déjà vu. I had been there, too many times. 

 

Are we built to forget when it comes to pain? It took only three and half years of his absence to bury 18 years of haunted nightmare. How willing I am to be deceived, even to believe that everything was fine, that my unwanted child was finally well, accepted by this world. But there he was again, at the other end of the phone line, much older but none the less lost and broken. If I were to go back to that wretched world, I thought to myself, I wish we were still at that old house and he was that helpless 5-year-old and I the mother lecturing him on how to play while I wiped away his tears. For some illogical reason, I’d freeze time, all suffering included, just to be a hopeful mother for her helpless child forever.

But the reality was a 15 minutes of pep talk over the phone to a son all grown in statue, a man exactly, who knows too much of rejection and too little of remediation. “I don’t know how to be with my friends” was his final admission. And they with you. I added silently. With faults not of his own, he is an equal impossibility to them. “My friends”, he has always called them this way, but little does he know what it means. 3 years ago, when they moved out of the dorm and invited him to share the apartment, it was a miracle of its own and yet these friends never came or called the house during the break or holidays. My head span in a whirlwind for wisdom or advice, all the while wondering if it were a lie – a lie for both of us to go back to that kitchen where future was a disguised dream. I was grateful too that he was at the other end of phone line or he might have seen through my hopeful words from my eyes that were almost at the brink of tears. My lie went on a few minutes more, and then there was no more to say.

And yet, too much left to say…. They would never pick you if they were given a choice; not for their new apartment, parties or anything. Could I blame them? In the game of life, would this world ever choose a player incapable to play by the rules? Would I even? The proper answer would go like this: Son, this world is not made for someone like you, but if I were to choose all over again for a game prepared for heaven, it would still be you. But the real answer is, knowing what I know, 22 years of toil and tears, I would not have picked him either. 

 

I thought of another mystery of life, another game in which I myself was among the choices - someone had picked me, knowing what He knew: poor in both potentials and performance. I couldn’t understand why or how. In fact, I would not even pick myself. Haven’t I doubted all my life if indeed I were chosen at all? In the grand scheme of life, any game under the sky lasts but a blink of eye. Still, it is a cruel game where the crowd wouldn’t cheer, players wouldn’t play fair, and the referees might not even make the right call. The most frustrating thing, above all, is that the end result is indefinitely undermined. As a fallen creature who is built for instant gratification, can I ever be content for just being picked in another game unseen? Could it be possible that my son, the last one picked, was selected first-handed for me? Maybe the unbearable waiting turns out to be a blessing – that it does not end here and the losers, or the never-picked, might just be the winners after all.