The Red Bag of Courage
by Melissa Eyre

My boys, Sam and Nate, will be turning 13 and 11 respectively within the next couple of weeks. This is not something I ever imagined would happen in my lifetime—that I would be the proud owner of two magnificent, funny, smart boys teetering on the brink of teenagerhood. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved being around boys all my life, starting with my older brother, moving on to my younger brother and right on up through several stellar boyfriends and two good husbands. But that is a very different ball of wax than the mind-blowing, mercurial relationship that occurs between mother and son.
The boys, and I say this with as generous a helping of detachment as can be mustered by a woman in my shoes, have grown into people I simply like to be with. They are tender when tender is in order, they have expanded my musical horizons and they get that a candy cigarette carries a lot of comic possibilities. Currently, though, we have a kind of dance of the crazed going on in which they cling to me one moment then act as if I’ve rolled in cow manure the next. I am watching with keen eye as they stretch and squirm on their way further out into the wilds of the world.
Though Scott, the boys’ father, and I did not turn out to be ‘til death do us part, I am not afraid to say out loud that he is handsome and talented and a great guitar player. And he is one helluva father. We have learned, along the rocky path of family reconfiguration, when to say when, and, in my humble opinion, that is is why the boys have become the boys they are on their way to becoming men.
Eight years ago when Scott and I declared a truce and achingly, heartbreakingly moved on, we made the decision to set up nearly complete rooms in each of our homes for the kids. It was enough that Sam and Nate would be lugging their sorrow around with them, they certainly didn’t need to be bogged down with a week’s worth of underwear on top of that. And I didn’t want want them to feel like they were on a trip that wouldn’t end, so we got an L.L. Bean canvas bag--white with red handles--for the few important items that needed to go back and forth. I secretly dubbed it The Red Bag of Courage.
When the boys were young, it was usually a stray plastic dinosaur or a new favorite book that made the Red Bag cut. For a long time Nate packed his favorite blanket and bear. Sometimes Scott and I exchanged notes, copies of doctor bills or travel itineraries. Winters saw the bag filled with hats, mittens and boots, but in time, as the boys got older and their backpacks got bigger, the Red Bag carried less and less stuff until, at some point during the last school year, it was no longer needed at all.
I know the retirement of the Bag is a good thing--one less thing to lug around, but it also means that the boys really are growing up and away. They no longer need their parents to pack their medicine or their cleats; they’ve got it down. I know this will carry them far as they go through life--watch as they enter college and they’re the only guys on their hall who can track down both their toothbrush and toothpaste or know when they need a refill on their inhaler. Still, I sometimes miss those tyrannosaurus and blankey days.
Starting next week the boys will be settling down into their new lives as students at CCS. Scott and I have agreed that their schedules will dictate our sharing arrangement, so there will hardly be any back and forth movement in the coming months. The Red Bag now relegated to the mud room, we are all learning, over and over, the importance of letting go.