I normally enjoy seeing packages arrive, be they surprises from a friend or relative, an expected shipment containing something we've ordered, or "freebie" samples we've requested from a company. Boxes containing books or teas are always high on our what's come today? list. As you might imagine, bills (a necessary evil in life, unfortunely) and the IRS has a question for you letters fall to the very bottom of that list, where they fight it out with junk mail for the dredging sludge at the bottom of the pit spot. The last (and only!) such letter we received from the IRS damn near gave me a heart attack right there at the mailbox. My kids could easily have come home from school and found me sprawled dead in the street, still clutching the letter in my hands. My first horrified thought when I saw it was that we we had been chosen for the quite dubious "honor" of being audited; I've never been so glad to be wrong in my life! All these years later, I'm still trying to figure out how they managed to lose the back side of one of the two-sided forms I'd filled out. But I suppose it's not for me to question; the IRS works in strange and mysterious ways and can totally screw up your life if you're foolish enough to draw their attention and anger them in doing so. It's not a pretty sight when it happens. I knew someone who was idjit enough to get into a pissing contest with the IRS. He lost. Big time. And got targeted for a full audit every year for quite awhile thereafter.
I knew I didn't want to risk that fate, so I photocopied my file photocopies of all of the original forms I'd submitted (plus some of the supporting documentation I hadn't been required to actually submit, in the name of I-don't-want-to-get-yet-another-letter-because-they-also-lost-something-else complete disclosure), and mailed everything in via registered mail, just as quickly as was humanly possible. I guess that made them happy, we never heard anything more on the issue. But I digress much too far....
Boxes we weren't expecting can be fun too; usually they mean that The Grandparents have gone shopping and have sent something to our kids. Aramis has traditionally been happier to see such packages arrive. He's much easier to please than Porthos, who has very definite ideas about what he does and doesn't like, and can on occasion be somewhat less than tactful when expressing those opinions. I suspect he'll learn a lesson or two about tact while he's in the military; if not from his instructors/superiors, then from squad mates he's managed to annoy. ...Or should I more accurately describe them as "squid mates"?
Today's delivery is different. I know what's in it. And I don't want to open it. Because if I do, it will mean that I've been quietly deluding myself to get through this last week's separation. It will mean that I'm going to have to finally admit that my youngest son really isn't coming home for dinner after spending the day hauling wood or swimming with his buddies, because he is now Official U.S. Government Property; that it will be nearly two months before I can hug him again; and that for at least the next five years, we'll be lucky if we get to see him for even a few days a year.
For so long, I yearned for the day when I'd no longer be changing his diapers, or tying his shoes for him, or nagging him about homework, or ferrying him back and forth to school and sports because he was too young to drive, or signing extracurricular activity permission slips for him because he was a minor. And that day came, and strangely enough, I wasn't ready for it at all. He's a grown man now with a life of his own. And I realize how much of a fool I was for all those years.
I want my little boy back....
No comments:
Post a Comment