It was six months ago today that my life was turned upside down and I’m not talking about my mortgage. At about 11 AM, I talked to my primary care physician who I had just met the day before. He informed me that my blood work had come back with several problems. Not only were my kidneys failing, I could have a heart attack at any time. All of a sudden, my many mortgages didn’t mean a whole lot.
By the end of the day, I was in the hospital wondering what was to become of my life. Just four days later, I pretty much knew I had cancer. I lot of things went through my mind that night, but the one that kept circling around was that my job as a parent wasn’t done and I really needed to finish that.
Like my parents, I did not become a parent until my late thirties, 38 to be exact. In my parents’ case, it wasn’t because they didn’t want to, they just couldn’t. Then after 18 years of marriage, I was born. My mother would live the next 22 years of her life thinking I was perfect. (I know my cousins reading this are getting a kick out of that statement.) I wasn’t perfect, but I think my parents did a good job of teaching me the right things.
The reason that I waited until I was 38 was not because I didn’t want to be a parent, it was because I just couldn’t find the right person to complete the circle. I married early, found out that it wasn’t right and became scared to death to become a two time loser. It wasn’t until I met Julia that that fear subsided. We both wanted children, so it was just a matter of time.
Although I knew I wanted to become a parent, I didn’t know the first thing about being a parent. I had no siblings and virtually all of my cousins were older than me. I had to learn on the fly. We bought and read some books, but in my opinion there hasn’t been a book written that can really prepare you for what is to come.
I remember bringing Justin home and being scared to death. It wasn’t long after that in doing my finger nail cutting job, I took off as much finger as I did nail. (Not to cheat Jason, I did the same thing to him shortly after we brought him home.) I was a work in process. Thank God Julia was around or I would never have gotten through it.
As a parent, you make decisions on a daily basis that may or may not have an impact on your children’s lives. In truth, you never know which ones will and which ones won’t, yet you keep on making them. And you have to do this without a guide book. Tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.
Now Justin is 18 and Jason is within a month and a half of being 16 and I think we have done a pretty good job, but I’m just not yet comfortable with the results. It’s like the artist that keeps putting on another stroke of paint on his masterpiece because he just isn’t happy with the way it looks.
Part of my problem is that I actually wonder down to the lower level and look in their rooms. What is it about teenage boys that leaves them with little or no sense of cleanliness. There are times I could walk across either of their rooms without ever touching the carpet because of all of the dirty/clean clothes on the floor. Why isn’t school as important as it was for us? They are both bright kids, but they just don’t seem to want to get that Rhodes Scholarship. Get a job? How could I be so insensitive?
These are the things that I see every day. They sometimes make me forget all of the compliments that we receive about the boys. The fact that we hear that they are such great kids from people all of the time seems to escape me when I look in their room. I somehow forget that Jason offered me one of his kidneys when he thought it might save my life that first day in the hospital. Or the fact that Justin received a full tuition scholarship to any of the community colleges in the Phoenix area? How do I miss these things?
When you have a child, it changes your life forever. All of a sudden, you are not the center of the universe. All of a sudden, you have another job to perform, one that you cannot take lightly. I’m also sure it is a job you never feel is completed, no matter how good your kids are or what they accomplish. I guess I’ll just keep plugging away.
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