Datebook: Monday, December 3rd ~ 2007

I am now working on my second fever blister in the last three weeks—the first one started the day before the drive to Sectionals.

The second one started pulsating on Thursday night when my son called from college and told me we needed to talk, but it had to be when we had “more time”.

“More Time” as in, the previous weekend when he was home for the Thanksgiving holiday and I had the privilege of watching him sleep in various locations throughout the house over a 96 hour period of time?

“Why can’t we talk now,” I asked, “I don’t have anything pressing to work on.”

“I’m walking across campus right now to meet my group.”

“Oh, to work on your final engineering project?”

“No, this is my group for the talent show. Some of the guys are dressing up like female pop singers and doing a dance—I’m Jennifer Lopez.”

“Well, I can see where that would take a good deal of time.”

“Yeah, J-Lo has a lot of hard moves.”

I feel my hand tighten on the phone and my upper lip start to puff. This is the boy who stopped figure skating when he was eight because of a green lycra onesy he had to wear for a skating show.

“Can you give me a hint about the subject that you want to discuss?”

“It’s just about Bio-Medical Engineering and how miserable I am.”

I start to think I can actually see my top lip when I look down; one side is huge, like I have had a collagen injection just on the right side. He told me he would call me the next night when he could “present his case.”

I called my friend on my way to Costco to get a muti-pack of Abreva.

“I can’t believe he is going to give up Bio-Medical Engineering—this is all he has talked about and why he went to that school. What if he wants to go into Political Science like his roommate—he would be horrible at that—he doesn’t lie well. Or worse, what if he wants to be a Social Worker. I have a skater in the family, I can’t support a social worker too.”

I get through the evening by having a Bailey’s Irish Crème mini I had stashed in the frig, and slathering small dollops of the tiny, seeming trial-size tube of Abreva, all over my Angelina- Jolie like upper lip.

My daughter calls when I am really starting to appreciate the Emerald Isle and regales me with the saga of her new skating boots.

“They’re great. I’m just wearing them straight through. The tongue falls in a different place so it’s rubbing on my right shin, but I wrapped it so the blood wouldn’t come through and stain the leather. I’m getting a bit of tendonitis too, but if I ice it for an hour after skating and then before I go to bed, it stops hurting.”

“That’s great babes, I’m glad they’re working out for you,” I answer while reaching for the comfort of my minuscule blue and white tube.

“Oh, and mom, my flat tire light keeps coming on, but that doesn’t make sense because you just put new tires on my car two weeks ago. What do you think that means?”

I don’t answer because I am searching behind a half-empty bottle of Power-aide and a jar of Mrs. Fanny’s pickles for another mini bottle. Without luck, I grab the lemon-lime mixture and wince as the lemon hits my Mt. Everest-like lip.

I tell my daughter to stop by the Toyota dealer in her “free time” which she denies having, and check my look in the mirror (Billy Joel style) —no lipstick in the world can cover this eruption.

Through the night, my lip seems to have its own heartbeat which I am able to count so I get up at three in the morning to check my email and do Christmas shopping on-line.

Insomnia makes me want to reach out to the source of my sleeplessness and I consider calling my son to see if he is free to talk then, or calling my daughter to see if her flat tire light is still on, but I talk myself off that ledge of crankiness. My lip will soon need its own zip code so I continue to rub the magical elixir onto my mouth.

My son calls at three in the afternoon. I hold the phone to the other ear so my protruding lip doesn’t touch the receiver.

“You know, freshman year is always hard. You don’t have to make your mind up now, you just need to keep going and finding the right path.”

“That’s just it. I think I have found the right path. I really like the biology part of my classes and the engineering functions less so--I might want to double-major and be in Pre-Med.”

I swallow.

“So, you’re not thinking of Sociology?”

“No. Where do you come up with these things?”

I don’t respond to this because I really can’t.

“Oh, and mom, we won the talent show. I’ll send you the link for YouTube and you can watch it—it’s pretty funny.”

YouTube? The fumes from the Docosanol have now penetrated my brain so I answer him a bit too happily, “Oh, I have my own tube,” and I reach again for my blue and white Abreva.

Mombo