I call him at midnight and
he’s back at his friend’s house. He
tells me he’s sleeping over. When I ask
why, he caves and tells me the truth.
“Ok, I’m not sleeping over, but one of my friends (a girl) was so drunk
she ended up at the hospital and I want to go see her and make sure she is
okay.”
He does, and she is, but
still.
My son and his friends are
smart kids, if the colleges they go to are any way to judge. But the teenaged mind is a funny thing; it
causes stupid behavior.
My son was born around
2am. I was grateful he was born in the
wee hours of the morning, as the hospital then let me stay an extra day. I went to Lenox Hill Hospital on November 10,
1992, around 4pm. It was a Tuesday, and
I had been in some type of labor since waking in the middle of the previous Sunday
night. Eric, my son’s father, met me at
the hospital and stayed with me through my son’s birth. This was a wonderful surprise since Eric and
I barely spoke throughout my pregnancy.
I was 41 and he was a young 29.
He was definitely not planning on becoming a parent quite yet.
The labor and delivery
went smoothly, and like all births, my life was irrevocably changed in an
instant. I had no idea how to be a
mother, but was allowed to stay at the hospital until Friday where I was taught
the basics of breast-feeding and diaper changing. Here's me and my mom leaving the hospital.
Fortunately, my baby developed at the same
speed that I learned. Until he got
older.
I am good at following
rules. I am organized and like order in
my life. When I wanted to lose 40 pounds
a few years ago, I joined Weight Watchers, followed their rules, and poof, in 8
months all my excess weight was gone. In
school, I was an all-A student, because there too, the rules are spelled
out. Study, don’t miss deadlines, go to
class, and you will do well.
But where are the rules
for mothering a teen?
It’s so much easier to
manage one’s own life than to parent someone else’s.
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