Five Feet Away

How old is too old for a son to sleep in the same bed as his mother?
My good friend Simone has a nine-year-old son. She is a single mother, never been able to afford an apartment large enough for an extra bedroom. even though her son's bed is a mere five feet away from hers, her son demands to crawl into bed with her every night. If she fights this, or tries to bribe him, or uses savvy, crafty language to encourage his needed Independence, he cries.
And not just whimpering. Loud, hysterical sobbing. As if a bomb has exploded in the backyard and the only thought of safety or comfort is his heels crooked into the back curving of mommy's knees. If he wakes in the night and Simone is breathing heavy and steady a foot from his face, all is good in the world. If he wakes in his own bed, even with the radio simmering and a small lamp glowing above his head, bad, bad things may happen.
The ghosts will float out, the monsters will inch their ugliness from under the bed, the wind against the blinds is really a bad man trying to break in, steal him away, hurt his mother. She is all he has. He needs to keep her safe as much as she must protect him from fears even he can't explain or understand.
Simone struggles with this, she told me. She realizes it is best for him, a priority at this age for her son to sleep in his own bed, to face these fears with sword and shield. But even she enjoys the comfort of another body in her bed. She can turn her head slightly and see the rising of his chest, the mouth open wide, the arms wrapped loosely around a spare pillow at his waist. She knows he is at peace, he is safe, he has loosened his fears from their grip just for the night at least.
Yet she feels like a failure. She is not tough enough or strong enough. She knows too little of discipline, having been coddled herself as a child, the baby in the family, the mother who was utterly selfless. Simone knows what she needs to do, for herself, for her son. He has even admitted he is ashamed that he still sleeps with her. If his friends found out, he would be mortified. He feels like a failure himself and either sobs or crawls into his quiet little boy cave, hiding like a cub from emotion he is not ready to feel.
I don't know what to tell Simone. Keep trying, is all I can say. Eventually he'll be ready on his own. He'll know when the right time is. Yet I don't know if even I believe this. What if she starts a relationship and that man wants to sleep in her bed? How will her son react? Will he feel abandoned, jealous, over-protective? Some kind of strange, yet innocent Oedipal complex?
I can only hug her and listen to her and offer thoughts I'm not sure of myself.
Motherhood is more complex than the makings of the perfect mashed potatoes. They may look good, be the right texture, creaminess, the right amount of salt. But if anyone ever knew the effort and compulsive attention it takes to make those white perfect peaks on your plate, they would faint at the thought of it. They wouldn't even want to know the secret. The fantastic, terrifying secret ingredient. They wouldn't want to know that sometimes you don't even know. You close your eyes, bite your lip, grab something from the shelf, and toss in the pot without looking. It's all just luck really.