Dean Poling
A hint of embarrassment slides into his voice, when his mother says, I love you. Not that he doesn’t love his mother. Embarrassment or not, he responds by saying, he loves her, too.
It’s just that she’s on speaker phone. Everybody can hear both sides of the conversation. Everybody being this young man, my oldest son and myself. And possibly people in the surrounding houses who’ve been awakened by this situation on the side of a midnight road.
The teenager’s car has broken down. He thought it had run out of gas. He called my son with a request for a full gas can. My son and I fill up the gas can. We find this young man’s car stalled in a neighborhood street. We empty the gas can into his tank. Still no start, just an engine’s grinding refusal to turn over.
We push his car out of the street. Popping the clutch in a roll doesn’t inspire the ignition to crank. It does cause his car alarm to whoop and ring, inspiring lights to brighten the windows of darkened houses.
A ride is offered, but he has called his dad. His father will pick him up. We wait for the boy’s father to arrive.
Waiting on the side of the road, the young man calls his mother. They exchange I love yous. Hers expressed without hesitation. His likely no less sincere but said with trepidation, a lowering of voice.
Standing alongside a road, hazards flashing, cars whooshing past so close our parked cars tremble, nighttime, with people looking out of their windows, a man walking outside into his carport, just a silhouette with what looks like something dark gripped in one hand, that lonesome sound of distant passing highway traffic on the lighted horizon of Bemiss Road, a mother’s love is a good thing to have on your side here.
In their love and worry, many mothers have a practice of praying for guardian angels for their wayward sons, especially those sons stalled alongside a dark road, whether that is a literal road in the middle of the night, or a figurative road in the darkness of a life and soul.
I wonder how many times my own dear mother’s prayers gave me some extra edge, a twist of added luck, a guardian angel to watch over my old days and old ways. Standing alongside this road, as old as I am, as many dark roads where I have stalled in the past, I know if my mom knew my location, she would offer a little prayer for me, even now, even now.
If she were on the phone, she would tell me that she loves me. Age has taught me not to be embarrassed by such a declaration but to treasure those words, that mother’s love and concern, and return it in kind.
So, young men, don’t be embarrassed by a mother’s love. Don’t duck it. Don’t whisper away from it. Accept it and rejoice in it.
It may be Dad who drives out in the middle of the night to get you, but it may well be Mom’s prayers back home that will see you through your dark time on the side of the road.
Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor. His book, “Waiting for Willie,” a novel, is available at The Valdosta Daily Times’ 201 N. Troup St. offices.
