Posted by guest blogger Mommynator.
So have you all missed me? I'm sure you've been waiting with bated breath to hear my next ramblings and I decided we've been too serious lately. We need to laugh so we can keep our perspective.
I've been studying biology - eating, breathing, excreting, etc. It's been quite an experience that I'll leave for another time.
This weekend, my preoccupation has been parenting - it's promise, its pitfalls, its mistakes and the rewards.
My son, our oldest, returned from his second tour of Iraq around 10/31. While he was over there, one of his friends found a great apartment with 3 bedrooms, eat-in kitchen, living room, LAUNDRY room (geez, I had to wait until we bought our first house just to have a WASHER, let alone a washer and dryer!) and garage in Watertown near Fort Drum. Pretty nifty. But it's about half an hour from Fort Drum, and his main car was with us.
You have to understand my son and his cars (yes, plural). He takes them seriously. Very very seriously. He treats them like an oncologist treats a possible cancer - with great and meticulous care. He also modifies them because that's his nature. I don't think he'll ever buy a car without getting into it and making it better somehow. (Picture his future longsuffering wife with the family minivan or SUV or whatever.) He rebuilt our Civic's engine and tranny and we now consistently get 38 mpg. He has plans to do something else (which description made my eyes glaze over) so it will eventually get up to about 50 mpg. He says it's very possible to do this on all cars, but many manufacturers don't want to tool up for such things. That's another story.
Before he left for Iraq, he decided he wanted to see what was going on with this newly-purchased 1993 Acura Legend, 6 speed, with large engine (forget how big, but huge). It's a rare configuration, and he wants to do whatever it is he has planned on it and sell it at a major profit. Unfortunately, he got caught up in one of those "five-minute jobs" that seem to plague our family (named after the time my husband had to replace one section of pipe from its entry to the cellar, and ended up having to replace all the piping to the water meter - a five-minute-job that turned into an eight-hour ordeal).
And so he basically left the car in pieces and made his best friend (our daughter's fiancee) who is also mechanically inclined promise to complete the basic work necessary to get it running. Sigh. There have been overtimes and family things and so many other things that went on, that the bare basics were done just as my son came home.
Time for him to have his car, and thence the road trip. I took last Thursday off to make a flying trip up to Watertown from Staten Island, use the facilities and turn right around to come back, and fortunately my youngest girl had the day off and whose mission it was to slap me if I started falling asleep. And thus to the small adventures that I believe make life interesting. Who wants a normal trip?
We left about 7 am and immediately ran into NJ Turnpike traffic (not unexpected) which was rubbernecking. I hate rubbernecking. Geez, haven't you seen accidents with blood'n'guts before? Unless you're an EMT, doctor, nurse or firefighter, nobody needs you around. And that's the honest truth.
And then the dizzying curves going to the Delaware Water Gap - ears a'popping. Unfortunately, my Buick does not handle curves with any degree of fun like Matt's Acura or my Civic. This is when the slapping came in.
And so it was time to have breakfast (coffee preventing more slapping). Our family loves truck stops and small obscure diners. And we found a very obscure diner, half of whose neon sign was out (we stopped at a DIN). The whole place was old, but it was so spotless we could have done surgery on one side of it, then eaten off the floor on the other side. I've also noticed this about Pennsylvania - they take their bathrooms very seriously. I have NEVER been in a bathroom in Pennsylvania that wasn't sterile and sparkling. It's "Pennsylvania clean"!
We sat down and placed our order with a sweet young waitress, got our coffee/hot chocolate and smiled at each other. We enjoy each other's company, my kids and I. I'm very blessed. In the middle of talking about her school, in came a man who reminded me of the truck driver in that movie with Bill Murray where he inherits the elephant and walks it across the country - skinny and wound tighter than a crossbow. Obviously he's a well known local character. He asked about a couple of people, expecting them to be at the diner. And then comes the best.
He proceeded to show the assembled waitresses his nails - painted the brightest, deepest cherry red one could get. He then explained that the girls in the shop put gold Chinese letters meaning "good" on each nail (probably really meant, here's one fubard human being or the Chinese equivalent). The waitresses were kind and smiled and oohed and ahhed. I guess one of the waitresses felt embarassed because she kept looking at me rolling her eyes as if to say, "We're not all inbred." Vastly amused we were.
Oh, and the food rocked like it usually does in these places.
Back to the Buick, back on the road where we encountered snow flurries, snow one foot deep and then ten miles down the road, nothing. No snow. No flurries. Complete quiet. (More slapping.)
My son sent me directions, and his skills, for all that he was an Eagle Scout, Order of the Arrow and Army, leave much to be desired. So Mom had printed out the directions from both Google Maps and Mapquest. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They were fine until we got off at the right exit in Watertown. Then they maliciously led us over the river and through the woods until finally we called and his roommate came to lead us home. Thanks, Darcy.
The boy had actually cooked for us. Chicken cutlets with steamed veggies. Mom smiles, knowing he'll never starve or be malnourished.
The apartment is pretty much still unfurnished except for sleeping places, which is probably just as well at this point. It's a great apartment. I could see myself living there happily.
We jump in the car to come home to Staten Island. It was six hours of happiness as he got me all caught up with things in his life in an uninterrupted venue. Usually there's other people around and I never get a straight story. And he was able to share his heart with me, which is very gratifying for a mom.
I learned that he's been pursuing a certain young women who is someone I've been hoping he would end up with. He explained the unique stresses of his last deployment finally - he couldn't really discuss those things in emails or phone calls or IMs. He discussed possible plans after he's discharged (around January 23rd), things he wants to do, places he wants to go (including Arizona to see Jessica, yay).
And listening to the sound of his voice and all that he said, it was amazing how much he had come into his own since he joined the Army five years ago. He hadn't changed. But he had learned to be unafraid to be his own man. And I'm so very grateful for this.
We become parents and there is lots one could read on how to parent and discipline and all that - and we read it all. But most of that went out the window eventually. Not that discipline is bad, or even the occasional board of education applied to the seat of knowledge. But what my husband and I really believed was that we needed to be father and mother like God is our Father. He knows our hearts, our desires, our talents and our weaknesses and He encourages us to be the person He made us to be, thwacking us upside the head when necessary, but in general loving us into our growth and hopefully maturity.
The best reward a parent could have is not that they become doctors or lawyers (unless that's their passion and gift), but that they become loving human beings who understand that life is about work and duty and joy. And one of the greatest joys is when they come and tell you all about it without prodding or nagging, because you've respected them all along. Just being there all along, like God is always there for us. Treating them as we would want to be treated.
Don't get excited, my husband and I were not perfect by any means. Far far far from it. But it's always amazing that if you struggle to do what you think is required of you, eventually it works out. It may not be what you pictured, but it's usually better.
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