Parenting Rumination #1

I remember the terror that flooded my soul when we were pulling out of the parking garage at Fort Sanders hospital in our little green Honda Civic, me with a belly full of gas and staples and stitches and a tiny little male human being strapped in like an astronaut in the back seat. What are these people thinking, letting me leave here with this baby? Do they realize what a giant mess I am?

And where's the handbook, or manual, or at least a laminated handout that would tell me what to do when I don't know what to do? I guess I could've called my own mother for advice, but then again, if she'd been all that, I probably would have had a little more information going into this gig. But I digress.

Twelve some-very-odd years later, I am listening to him play some kind of galactic shoot-em-up video game in the next room and feeling terrified all over again. He is standing on the edge of adolescence, growing zits and armpit hair and a mercurial temperament that would embarrass a schizophrenic. I am overwhelmed, truly, by how much I love him and want to save him from himself. He's already been through a lot of heartache, and if my own experience is any testament, it's about to get worse, at least for the next few years.

But how do we learn, if not from our own mistakes? I think I knew a handful of people in middle school and high school who actually did what they were told, but I and most of my friends were way smarter than our parents and had to learn things the hard way. And I do mean the HARD way. And now I watch my baby boy, defiantly and intentionally choosing the hard way, and it makes me feel sad and ill.

So I pray, and ask others to pray, and I love him as best I can, even when he is being quite unloveable.

I don't suppose there is a laminated handout for this part either.