Yeah, that's me talking to myself. The other day I was taking my son to shoot hoops (okay, play basketball) and he said "We've lived in a lot of different places". I stopped dead in my tracks (metaphorically speaking, I was driving) with yet another observation on my kid's part that I was as flawed as I know I am. Of course, that's not his intention or even his thoughts - yet. I have no doubt that he will share his mom stories with someone later in life. Hopefully, he and I will have communicated enough throughout his life so he will not have to spend money on therapy and instead can just share childhood anecdotes with his friends and lovers (how I hate that - please, someone, find a comparable word), but that's likely just rose-colored dreaming on my part. As we all know, anyone can have a baby. But...are you prepared? Do you want to give up your life and freedom? Are you ready to sacrifice, lose your perspective, be irrelevant, then wave bye bye and wonder what the f*** it was all for? Like, that's IT??
When my son made that comment the other day, instead of getting defensive or shrugging him off like may have happened to me when I was his age, I looked at him and said, as hard as it was, "You're right. Your dad and I took many years to figure out we weren't right for each other, and you had to pay the price for that. I'm sorry".
My son looked at me, and said "It's okay, I can deal".
The question is: can I?
What a good response. You handled that nicely. As did your son. Both signs (in my opinion) that you have your shit together as a parent. Which seems to be helping your son have his together, too.
ReplyDeleteI agree with C...you do and he does....
ReplyDeleteYour son will remember that response and the love and respect with which you communicate long after he forgets how many times he moved.
ReplyDeleteof course you can deal... and you do so beautifully. everything is exactly as it should be...
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