Even if you are the perfect mother, it is sometimes difficult to talk to your teenage son.

BUT MOM

Alcmeme gathered bunches of basil, thyme and rosemary tying them together with short pieces of string. She threaded together bright orange marigolds and purple cone-flowers to make colorful loops. After drying, the herbs and flowers would be useful all winter in cooking, dying and even healing. Pulling a chair over, she climbed up to hang them from the rafters in her kitchen. This would have been much easier for her son, who was now a good head taller than she was, but it seemed like such a trivial thing to bother asking him to do. These days Hercules seemed preoccupied, even bothered, by something. She wished he would talk about it.

"Mom, I need to talk to you." She couldn't believe her ears. She dropped a bunch of thyme, climbed off the chair, and turned to her son. He was sitting with his elbows on table resting his chin in the palms of his hands. He did not look happy.

"What is it, son, you know you can talk to me about anything." She tussled his long straight hair in a teasing manner, and sat down beside him in the chair they usually saved for Iolaus.

"Well, Mom, it's about. . ." Her son had an habit of sometimes trying to talk without the words actually coming out. His lips would move, his expression would change, but the worlds were lost somewhere between his mind and his lips.

"About what?" She thought she had a pretty good idea.

"Girls!" She was right.

"Mom, some of my friends have been teasing me about. . . teasing me because I am . . I am still . . . I haven't. . ."

"What boys?" Inwardly she breathed a sigh of relief. Being teased about being a virgin is a much bigger concern for a teenage boy, than it is for his mother. She'd give him a little time to compose himself.

"Iolaus. . . and Jason."

"I wouldn't worry too much about them, son. They are your friends. Iolaus is two years older than you are, and with all that his father has put him through, I am sure he felt losing his virginity was just another way to prove he was a man. You don't need to do that? Jason is a LOT older, but he should know better." He should know a lot better, she thought. He needs to be more careful.

"There was this girl, Medea, she tried to get me to have sex with her. I said 'no', and she then started chasing after Jason."

Alcmeme did not care to know about every teenage tramp with her eyes set on either her son or Jason.

"She seems like the kind of girl it would be easy to say 'no' to son. Have to watch for girls like that. If she changes men that easily, she was definitely interested in something other than feelings for you."

"That's what I say to Iolaus all the time. He has difficulty saying 'no' to anyone. He doesn't care if he doesn't know her, or if she is engaged, or even married."

"That could come back to haunt him in the long run."

"I keep telling him I don't want some man-chasing girl telling me I have to marry her. . . sorry Mom, I'm sorry." Alcmeme knew that her son had figured out she had been pregnant with Iphicles when she married her husband. They had been engaged though; their parents had planned the marriage. He was older, persuasive, and she had given in.

"I understand what you are saying. It's OK. You are definitely right."

"Mom, I look at my life, and I wonder. Why would any woman want me for a husband?"

"Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately, son? I think the question is what woman wouldn't?"

"I'm not talking about how I look. I'm talking about what I do. I fight battles. I fight monsters. What kind of a husband would do that? I'm not the type to stay home with a family."

"You're only fifteen. You have your whole life to settle down. I know you inherited a restless streak from your father, but when the right girl comes, you'll ease up a bit. Lots of women marry soldiers. I should know."

His mother was making this really difficult. He hadn't expected it to be easy, but he felt he needed to talk to someone about the feelings he had had recently. Maybe this was helping some, talking to his mother usually did, but they were still a long way from what he really wanted to talk about.

His mother wasn't the world's greatest advertisement for successful marriages to soldiers. It was one thing to have to worry about your wife coupling with another man in the village, or a stranger traveling through the area, throwing in the whole god thing took it to a different level. Knowing that you were conceived as a result of a broken marriage vow did not do a lot to sell you on the whole idea of the future of fidelity.

Alcmeme watched her son's face. A future wife's fidelity was not usually a major concern for teenage boys. He had been thinking a lot about this subject. Way too much; but that was Hercules.

"You're marriage was arranged right? We don't have the money for that? How am I going to find a wife if we don't have the money?"

"Hercules, I don't think you will have to worry about that -- when the time comes. You are going to be famous. Families are going to want you for a son-in-law, for a husband for their daughters, for a father for their grandchildren. A few sheep and goats will mean nothing when it comes to wanting to marry you."

"But, Mom."

"Or better yet. You will meet and marry some one you love. That's the best way!"

"How will I know when I meet someone I love?"

"Oh, Hercules, you will know. You will want to spend all your time with them. You will think about them when you are not with them. You won't care what other's say about you, you will just want to be . . ." She'd better shut up fast. There was nothing in her past that would lead her son to believe she had ever been in love, he might get suspicious.

"Only person I've ever felt that way about is . . . " Mouth moving again. No sound. She wasn't sure it was because he was Hercules, or because he was fifteen. "Sometimes I get these physical feelings though."

They'd had that talk before. When he was eleven, and then again when he was thirteen. He liked talking about changes in his body even less than he liked talking about emotions. Without a father she felt she had to do it though, and she had to do it early. He was large for his age, and his friends were definitely a problem. She shuddered to think what Iolaus had been telling him. She couldn't even begin to think about Jason.

"I know, sometimes they happen for what seems like no reason. Like when you are called on to talk in class. Sometimes you get them at night, when you are dreaming. It is perfectly natural. It happens to all boys. Don't let it worry you."

It wasn't the being called on in class that worried him. It was when he had been wrestling with Iolaus. Couldn't tell her that though.

"I don't. Sometimes I just go and jump in the pond. It helps."

She laughed.

He smiled, pretending to smile, hiding the fact that sometimes just looking at his best friend would cause his loins to ache. It didn't help that Iolaus loved to flirt. Sometimes he swore Iolaus was flirting with him. Sometimes he was sure Iolaus was flirting with Jason just to make him mad. Couldn't talk to his mother about that either.

"Mom, what if I don't get married. What if I decide that I can't find a woman I want to share my life with?"

Alcmeme felt a little more comfortable that he was back to marriage and away from the sexual longings, but felt that there was something they hadn't discussed. She wondered if the conversation was going another way, down a path she wasn't really prepared to discuss, but figured she was just worrying too much.

"Well, some men never marry. I think I would miss having grandchildren, but that is your decision."

"What would people say about the son of Zeus. . ." again no sound.

"Please, please, whatever you do with your life, don't live it because of what other people say. If you take nothing else from this conversation, please take that. Other people will say whatever they want to say. They certainly have said enough about me over the years. But I am happy. I have a wonderful son like you. I don't care what people say. You shouldn't either."

He was so proud of her. People would say he had the strength of ten men, he wished he had the strength of one woman, his mother. She was so brave. So defiant.

"Well, mom, I guess I have plenty of time to give you the grandchildren you want."

"That you do son, that you do."

"Here, let me hang those herbs and flowers for you. Then I think I am going to take a walk, if you don't mind."

"Thanks. That's fine."

He hastily hung the botanicals from the rafters and blew his mother a kiss as he walked hurriedly down the path. As soon as he was out of her sight he fell to the ground, grasping his crotch. Damn, he hoped she hadn't noticed. He thought of Iolaus with is bright blonde hair and soft blue eyes. He thought what it would be like to kiss him, to have him run his mouth over his face and chest. He wondered what Iolaus would taste like, when he wasn't covered with mud and grass. He thought about kissing, licking, stroking other parts of Iolaus's body, and wondered if he would respond the same way. He even imagined Iolaus doing things to him that he had heard other boys talk about, things he couldn't quite understand. He knew it wasn't uncommon to have these thoughts about other boys or men. It was just that he wasn't just any boy. He was the son of a god. But then he had heard stories about his own father and his male lovers. Again his hand went where his mind could not go. His body responded to the things that he could not bear to think.

Alcmeme's thoughts should have been with her son. He had a whole lifetime to sort things out -- to experiment. She wished she could have been of more help. She just wished that she could think about her son and his problems without her mind wandering to her secret lover. At a time when she was just about ready to believe that she would never again have a relationship with a man, she found herself involved with a person she had always thought of as a boy. When he came to tell her the man who she had been married to for sixteen years, the father of her oldest son, the man who had been away for almost ten years, had died, he had stayed to comfort her.

When the comfort proceeded to kisses and soft touches, she had blamed it on his being a randy teenager and was extremely upset with herself for being too excited to stop. Yet, the affair had continued. Jason could take her body and mind to places that even the King of the Gods did not know about. While they both told each other they were in love, they knew that what they shared would always have to be secret. "Other people" would never know of their love because he was a king. A king who would lead his country into battle. A king who would have to marry and produce heirs. A king who was one of her son's best friends. A king who was walking down the path to her house right now with his friend Iolaus.

"Iolaus, Jason," she called. "Herc's down by the lake. Should be back soon. I baked some nut bread, do you want to come in and eat it while we wait for him." She thought it was best to delay them, imagining what her son was probably doing right now.

"Nah, we'll go find him." Iolaus called back.

"Well, better make some noise. You know how he is when people sneak up on him."

"We will Alcmeme. Don't worry." Jason called back to her. She savored the secret glance.

She looked down at the flowers in her garden. She and her son both had family secrets -- sexual secrets -- that they could not share even with each other. In time, in time, she trusted her son to find the right path, his right path. It was herself, she didn't really trust.

McJude

October 2001