February 4, 2013 -- Be careful what you wish for

When you either make the decision to become a parent or you find out that the decision has been made for you, your life begins to change. It may be subtle at first, but it tends to gather momentum and in the end, your entire life has changed. It is no longer just about you and your significant other, your top priority becomes that little bundle of trouble.

You don’t realize in the beginning, but the sleepless nights that you have with a newborn are just the start. You think that when they actually start to sleep through the night, you are home free. You do look a little bit less frazzled, but deep down inside you are still engaged 24 hours a day with a sleepless night just around the corner. It goes from having to get up to a screaming child who needs a bottle to one that wakes up from a nightmare or an earache.

You get through all of that and then they get their driver’s license. They start off slow at first, but eventually they are left alone in the car as they run to the grocery store for you. Then they are going over to a friend’s and eventually they are going out on a date and it starts to get later and later that they are out. Eventually, it starts to eat into your sleeping. It doesn’t matter if they are 16 or 22, until you hear that door open and close at 2 AM its tough to sleep with both eyes closed.

The purpose of this whole journey is to create and mold a human being into someone in whom you can be proud. You want your child to be able to stand on their own feet and be successful without your help. You want them to eventually be independent. But then the time comes and you are not so sure that is what you really want.

Several weeks ago Julia and I made the trip to South Dakota to take Jason to school. This is no longer waiving to him as he gets on the bus for the first time as a kindergartener, this is giving him a hug, saying goodbye and leaving him alone 1,000 miles away from home. All of a sudden, you are not sure this is what you signed up for.

For the last 20 years, Julia and I have been caring for Jason in one way or another, either through prenatal care, changing a diaper at three in the morning or talking to him about the girl friend problems every teenager runs into. We loved, cuddled, spanked (yes, I was one of those Neanderthals that actually spanked his kids), read to, played with, instructed and even yelled at (Jason’s room is historically a mess as we often didn’t even know the color of the carpet). Jason and Justin had become a huge part of who we were and now we were shipping one of them off.

The weekend in South Dakota was filled with shopping to get all of the things we couldn’t stuff into a couple suitcases. I think Julia has watched too much HGTV as Jason is now equipped with enough cabinets, hooks, hangers and shelves to last him a lifetime. There is a place for everything and everything was in its place when we left. The question is how long will that be the case? Remember, this is the kid that left the house with who knows what stuffed under his bed to make his bedroom look cleaner.

We spent most of that Sunday sanitizing and arranging his room including creating a bed that is within three feet of the ceiling and has his desk and half of his clothes positioned neatly underneath. It took me three days to get over the aches and pains of that ordeal.

He stayed with us that night in the hotel because the dorm was still pretty empty as classes would not start until Thursday. We cleaned out the hotel the next morning and made our way to the local IHOP. For the most part, we were quiet at breakfast and ate about half of our meals. Eventually we had to get moving because if we missed our plane we might have to take out a third mortgage on the house to afford new tickets because Allegiant only makes two trips a week.

When we got to the dorm, we moved the last things in and said our goodbyes. I kept mine short because I knew the more I talked the more likely I would begin to cry like a 2 year old girl that just had her favorite doll taken away from her. Julia and I made our way to the airport and tried to convince ourselves that everything would be OK and this would be good for him.

Over the next few weeks we did our best to wean ourselves from Jason. After spending almost every day with him for 19+ years, it wasn’t easy. He finally told us he needed some space and we decided to give him that. Then three weeks into the journey he calls and says he has been throwing up and had diarrhea. With all of the publicity about the flu and the fact that it is killing off normal healthy teenagers in days, we felt helpless. For the first time we weren’t able to be parents and feel his forehead and give him chicken soup.

Once again the sleep interrupted nights had returned. Luckily after four days, he was feeling better and we could breathe easy. It seems that it doesn’t matter how old they are or how far away they are, you just can’t turn off that parenting thing. Maybe one day, I will write a book on parenting. The only problem is that it may have 24 blank chapters, because I’m not sure I have yet to figure any of it out.