We Love You So

I am thankful for reminders – sometimes gentle, sometimes bold, sometimes funny, sometimes sad – that my son is a little human being who needs not just love and discipline, but room to run, be wild, be free. That he will fall down. And then learn to get up. That he will get confused and not understand. And then raise his hand to ask for help. That he will roam far and away. And then discover and grow and become who he is. (And hopefully miss me terribly.)

These reminders come from good friends, professionals who have seen and heard it all, creative geniuses and, lest I forget, my own experience.

I took some time last night to think about growing up in Anna, Ohio, where we walked several blocks to school unsupervised. Only once did our parents seem to reconsider this, for the couple of weeks following the murder of the 40-something female attendant at the Gas America a mile or so down the road from our K-12 school.

Where, as young teen girls, my best friends and I rode our bikes for miles and miles down back country roads. No cell phones. No houses within shouting distance.

Where adolescent boys drove their daddies’ pick-ups from farm to field and parents tended not to lose their minds if we had real Pop Tarts and 2% store brand milk for a bedtime snack while we watched Beverly Hills 90210 before we were yet in high school ourselves.

Did our parents live in fear of our getting fat or pregnant or kidnapped or killed? Maybe, but I don’t think they were consumed by fear in the way so many parents seem to be today. Did we get to experience a little danger and eat a little too much sugar? Yes. We experienced fear and bellyaches – and of course heartache. But we also learned how to look both ways before darting our bikes across the county highway and how to negotiate real life from fiction, how to face tragedy and loss and pull together with our neighbors. And how to drive a stick shift. Maybe at 16, maybe at 13…no matter. It’s a terribly useful skill regardless.