I wait in the car line, listening to a podcast, left elbow propped on the car door, head resting against my palm. And then the line starts to move and I see him at the same time he sees me. It’s his second day in his new glasses and I swear, I wonder for a nanosecond which classmate of Asher’s this is waving at me so enthusiastically. But then the inner eye takes over and I recognize every single thing about him and I see in his body language that, even though he’s waving and smiling, something is wrong.

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No one else would ever know it from looking at him. But I know it the same way I used to know when he changed position at night when there was still a baby monitor in his room. I can sense it.

I inch along in the car, waiting my turn, watching him make his way into position to be swept into the car. A teacher opens the door and he clambers in with his big backpack, some artwork held in his hand and before he’s even belted in, he says “Mommy, I had the worst day ever.”

There is the slightest quiver in his 8 year-old voice.

“Mary told me she’s not my girlfriend anymore and she already has another boyfriend.”

A pause ensues in which my heart crumbles into a thousand tiny pieces. Me with the words – but none of them can get past the lump in my throat. I’m not ready for this.

“Mommy, she broke my heart.” There is a larger quiver this time.

Those thousand tiny pieces of my heart now crumble into dust. I swallow my lump even though it feels like I will choke. Here is my cue. Here is where I say something that helps, that makes it all better.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” I look into the rearview mirror trying to see his face, gauge his pain but he’s slumped against the window. Why does it feel as if my heart has stopped beating?

“What happened? Did you cry?”

“No, I didn’t cry. She just said I wasn’t her boyfriend anymore. I wanted to cry but I just put my head down on the desk.” And then he puts his forehead into the crook of his left arm, careful not to injure his new eyewear.

I feel the exact pain I felt when someone was breaking up with me – an electric numbness spreading from my center, shooting out towards my arms and legs and throat. What can I say to stop him from feeling this way? There has to be something. I’m mommy. I’m magic.

But maybe he’s getting a little old for my brand of magic because I can’t think of anything to do or say. Suddenly I’m 8 and why am I driving a car and why doesn’t the boy I like like ME anymore? I want my daddy and some ice cream and to go back into my bedroom and doodle on the flowery lavender wallpaper and forget there’s a world outside my door.

His father would be so much better at this than me. He would be rational, calm. He would not be silent now. Stuck.

I am the emotional equivalent of Niagra Falls. I want to turn the car around and tell off a second-grade girl. These are not calm and rational thoughts.

I clear my throat. Swallow again.

“It’s okay to cry, honey. I know that must’ve hurt really bad. When we get home, you can cry as much as you want and mom will just hug you, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, wobbly.

There is another minute of silence where I am the exact wrong person to be helping him right now.

“Do you want to talk about it some more,” I half-whisper, “or would you like to talk about something else?”

“Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about Hadley. Did we ever figure out what kind of dog she is? Talking about my girl always makes me feel better.”

The discussion that ensues is about everything except his broken heart. About how we rescued the family dog and we don’t know what kind she is. And speculation on how many and what types of dogs she has in her family tree. And on to how dogs do indeed make people feel better – that they can even be trained as therapy dogs to help sick people and the elderly feel better. I talk and I pause. I talk and pause, giving him space to bring the subject back around. He doesn’t.

We pick up Meyer next and he starts a fight within seconds of getting into the car because it’s any old day to him and that’s what brothers do. I shush him several times but like any day, he doesn’t listen. When we get home, Asher goes first to the door and waits while I get Meyer out of his car seat. I tell him quickly to please be nice to his brother today – that his girlfriend broke up with him and his heart is broken and we need to be kind to him.

When we’re inside, I give him a great big, long hug — so long that he is pulling away, his head already in another place. “Can I watch a show, mommy?”

We do the normal things we do in a normal day – homework, baths, a little TV, punctuated by my emotional pulse-taking.

I can’t believe that an hour after we’re home, he seems over it. When Gabe comes in and tries to talk to him about it, he shrugs him off. He already wants to move on.

I stand in the kitchen watching but mostly going blink blink, blink blink. I thought I would be a better bigger kid mom than little kid mom. Now I think I’ve gotten it all wrong.

The next day after school, Meyer goes from grinning to an Oscar-worthy sad face when I ask him how his day was.

“I had a bad day,” he says, the edges of his mouth turning down dramatically. “Hank broke up with me.”

My right eyebrow goes up, a crooked smile comes to my lips and I look at his little 3-year-old face in the rearview mirror, waiting for him, with his quickness, to recite the next line.

“Hank broke my heart.”

When I got married to my husband, I thought I’d had my last broken heart – finally. But as it turns out, I’m just getting going again.

But so far, it looks like we’ve survived our first broken heart.

 

Just a tip before you go – since those Christmas bills can also break your heart. Last year, thanks to the advice of a good friend, I signed up for Ebates just before Christmas and got a nice big check back afterwards. Or what I like to call “boot money.” It’s as simple as this. Remember to go to ebates and then click through to wherever you want to shop (Target, Sephora, Macy’s, Amazon, on and on and on) and then you get a rebate on what you buy. It’s that simple and there’s no catch.

And if you’re kind enough to use the above referral link, I’ll get a little happy for sending you their way and we all win!