Oregon Humanities

Waiting for Superman

Harriet Fasenfest, Portland

My mother says “you are only as happy as your saddest child,” and she is right. It’s not that my son is entirely sad but still searching. And I hurt for his searching, I feel pain for his confusion, I long for his triumph from the scars of addiction and for the return of his joy.

Like many single mothers, I was my son’s friend as much as anything else. Beyond that, we were co-conspirators. When he was Peter Pan, I was his Wendy. When he was Superman, I was his Lois Lane. Thick as thieves we were. For better and for worse. Two kids together.

I cannot discount the impact of my immaturity on my son’s life. Today parents know better. They know to be adult, resolved, mature. Back then, well, it was a crapshoot. Some of us were luckier than others.

As a teenager I was a hell-raiser. Yes, early on I had grand notions of traveling to the south of France to learn how to make perfume or to go to cooking school or art school on a fjord, but prudence, fear, or a simple lack of faith on the part of my parents squelched most of those big vision dreams and somehow, as a consequence, I imagined hanging out with my friends down at the park in an endlessly inarticulate rendition of the Haight would serve as a consolation prize.

Those years (primarily fifteen to eighteen) were little more than a blur. In the years that followed, I made choices that were part brave and part crazy. Each invention (and I must say, reinvention was my strongest suit) brought another life and it would not be disingenuous to suggest I was more fiction than fact. Still, I was a survivor, and a fairly smart one at that. I knew, in the eleventh hour, where the third rail was hidden and what, in the end, was simply too hot to handle.

And my son? Like his mom, he is trying to find his fit and like his mom his journey is messy. Sometimes I tell him that he must be careful. I try to tell him he must learn how to manage his creative mind and be careful of the third rail. That too long in the deep funk of an inarticulate life can find us worse for wear. I should know. I made it out just in time.

Yes, my son is his own man, but yes, I did fail in the way I delivered a certain genetic disposition—for good or bad—to my son. What shall he make of it, I wonder? Will he find the courage to fly off bravely and hopefully into the wild blue sky? When and if he does, I hope he remembers his Lois—she always believed in him.