Yesterday was 3M's 21st birthday (and just between you and me - when did I become old enough to have three of my children be over 21?). To celebrate the occasion, his godfather and I will join him tonight for his first alcoholic beverage. At least, his first legal one. (*sigh*) The number of times we’ve run into each other at the liquor store reminds me not to lay more significance on the event than it deserves. . .
We’ve always had a bit of fun with the fact that my first son’s birthday is two days after mine. On occasion, we’ve even had our birthday observances combined.
What’s more, both of us were born in leap years, so we both missed, by a matter of days, being born on ‘Leap Day’, February 29th. Being the odd ducks that we are, Molly and I always harbored a secret hope that among our children would be red-haired, left-handed twins; a February 29th birthday would be icing on the cake. We do have some left-handedness among our kids – 4M writes left-handed, but throws right-handed (given that degree of ambidexterity, I insisted that he hit lefty in baseball); and 8M is still pretty ambidextrous. But, alas, no redheads (and given the red highlights in my beard - at least before it went gray - we had some hopes). And no twins. At least, not yet. ;)
I did know a girl in college whose birthday was February 29th. So every year, we would gather at her room at 11:59 PM on February 28th to sing Happy Birthday to her, ending just after midnight on March 1st, figuring that somewhere in there was her birthday. (The same girl told us how, when she was in high school, she counted the time from her parents’ wedding anniversary to her birthday. Counting only 8½ months, she confronted her mother with the damning evidence; her mom responded, “Do you think you could maybe give us the benefit of the doubt for two weeks?”)
Anyway, when Molly’s due date with 3M was in early March, we instantly began hoping that he’d be a few days early, and come on the 29th (save on birthday parties that way, dontcha know). As the calendar passed into late February, we began to wonder if there was anything we could do to bring the baby into the world on the desired day. We talked about going for a drive on back-country gravel roads. As the weather warmed up, we even talked about going for a bike ride. We never did any of those things, but they were at least fun to talk about.
February 29th came and went, without so much as a false-labor contraction, nor any dilation. So we moved our focus on to the possibility that our baby would be born on my birthday (which was my 32nd that year).
My younger sister and I actually share our birthday (technically, I suppose she’s my step-sister – my mom’s daughter from her first marriage – but I’ve only ever called her my sister), which was the occasion of some teasing between us over the years. When our folks were first married, and our new family was very new, I used to tease her that it couldn’t be her birthday, because I had it first (she’s two years younger than me). But every year, Mom would make two birthday cakes. I don’t remember how the birthday parties went most years, but I do recall one year, my sister and her friends had a birthday party upstairs, while my friends and I had one in the basement, at the same time. God bless my mom for that. . .
Anyway, returning to the main story, my birthday, too, came and went without event. So at that point, the pressure was off; none of the subsequent days carried any special significance, and 3M was born two days after my birthday. Which, as it turned out, was his exact due date. And having a boy after two girls was nice, in its own way.
Of course, the birth of a child invokes all manner of hopes for the future, and wondering who the new little person will turn out to be. And, over the subsequent 21 years, his life, and ours, have gone places that we never would have imagined (much less hoped for). And that is just part of the richness of being human, isn’t it?
Showing posts with label 3M. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3M. Show all posts
Friday, March 6, 2009
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
This Week On 'All My Children'
Things with us are actually in a relatively peaceful state, right at the moment. 1F is through with all the court haggling - her baby's adoption is final, and her relationship with the adoptive parents is working out pretty well. She's working, and this fall she's back in school, studying speech pathology. So her life is in as good a place as it's been in a long, long time. It’s a little hard being a 24-year-old college freshman – all her age-peers have long since graduated and gotten on with their lives – but that’s a pretty minor complaint, compared to where she’s been.
2F is still doing well – she’s one or two classes away from getting her initial ‘professional’ certification, which will allow her to make more of a real living for herself. She moved out of our basement ‘apartment’, and in with some single women from our Christian community. When she completes her certification, she’s giving serious thought to doing a year of voluntary missionary work.
Even with 3M, things aren't as bad as they've been. He's starting to see the fruit of the crap he's been throwing around for the last several years, and starting to think that he needs to take a different approach. He actually told Molly recently that he wants to start turning his life around. Of course, we're all in favor of that, and we want to encourage him to do that. But he's spent years forming bad habits that he's going to need to break if he really wants to turn his life around. It won't be easy, and we told him that. But at least the need is recognized, and the desire is there.
In other ways, he’s sort of floundering right at the moment. He can't seem to find a job, but he bought himself a beater van. But he's got no money to put gas in it, so he leaves it parked on the street in front of our house. . . . At any rate, he's only got a month or so to go before his life starts running according to somebody else's script for a while.
4M is back in school for his sophomore year in high school. His date with the magistrate in August went as well as it possibly could have – all the charges against him were dropped, since he’s got no prior record, he’s a good student, and an otherwise upstanding citizen. He’s got ‘points’ against him just sitting there, waiting for him to get a driver’s license, but he’s in no hurry for that right now (and neither are we, given what his insurance rates would likely be). He seems to have been chastened by the whole experience. That would be a good thing. We keep getting flashes of hot-headed defiance from him that we’d rather do without, but some (most?) of that falls under the heading of ‘teenaged male’.
The younger kids are pretty much status quo, at least per this previous post. Growing in wisdom and stature, and all that. But we’ll see what adventures they’ve got stored up for us, when the time comes. . .
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2F is still doing well – she’s one or two classes away from getting her initial ‘professional’ certification, which will allow her to make more of a real living for herself. She moved out of our basement ‘apartment’, and in with some single women from our Christian community. When she completes her certification, she’s giving serious thought to doing a year of voluntary missionary work.
Even with 3M, things aren't as bad as they've been. He's starting to see the fruit of the crap he's been throwing around for the last several years, and starting to think that he needs to take a different approach. He actually told Molly recently that he wants to start turning his life around. Of course, we're all in favor of that, and we want to encourage him to do that. But he's spent years forming bad habits that he's going to need to break if he really wants to turn his life around. It won't be easy, and we told him that. But at least the need is recognized, and the desire is there.
In other ways, he’s sort of floundering right at the moment. He can't seem to find a job, but he bought himself a beater van. But he's got no money to put gas in it, so he leaves it parked on the street in front of our house. . . . At any rate, he's only got a month or so to go before his life starts running according to somebody else's script for a while.
4M is back in school for his sophomore year in high school. His date with the magistrate in August went as well as it possibly could have – all the charges against him were dropped, since he’s got no prior record, he’s a good student, and an otherwise upstanding citizen. He’s got ‘points’ against him just sitting there, waiting for him to get a driver’s license, but he’s in no hurry for that right now (and neither are we, given what his insurance rates would likely be). He seems to have been chastened by the whole experience. That would be a good thing. We keep getting flashes of hot-headed defiance from him that we’d rather do without, but some (most?) of that falls under the heading of ‘teenaged male’.
The younger kids are pretty much status quo, at least per this previous post. Growing in wisdom and stature, and all that. But we’ll see what adventures they’ve got stored up for us, when the time comes. . .
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Monday, June 12, 2006
My Son, My Son
Our oldest son, 3M, was a very cute little kid. He was precociously bright, cheerful, friendly, and funny. When he was in 2nd grade, he memorized most of a book of Shel Silverstein poems, several of which he recited for a school talent show. One of the school moms played in a band that had regular night-club gigs, and she got him hired for a 20-minute bit between sets of the band, for which he made $20, plus all the fries he could eat.
In school, 3M always craved the elusive elixir of 'coolness' - more than anything else, he wanted to be 'popular'. It never happened for him, at least not to anything like the degree that he wanted, so he started acting more and more outrageously, in a vain attempt to win social status. When the other kids still wouldn't give him what he wanted, he just raised the level of outrageousness, until finally, in 7th grade, the Catholic school we sent him to told him to find another school for 8th grade.
That summer, between 7th and 8th grades (2001), he met a girl, and went completely ape-shit nuts over her. I won't rehash all the gory details, except to say that, all through that summer, he would regularly run away from home, for days at a time, to go see the girl.
He told the girl's parents how abusive and violent we were, and that I would "probably shoot" him if he showed up at home. Thus, a police officer appeared at our door asking me if I owned a gun (I didn't, and never have). A few days after that, a State of Michigan social worker came to our house and spent several hours trying to catch us acting abusive and violent (she didn't; in fact, we have documentation on file with the State of Michigan that we are a stable, loving family - how many of you can say that?). For a few days we didn't know for sure whether our other kids would be taken from us or not.
That fall, the situation came to enough of a head that he was admitted to a 'halfway house' program for troubled teens; he physically lived in the 'halfway house' for two weeks, and we had counseling sessions every other evening. At the end of the time, we gave him a choice - either come home and live under our authority, of find another place to live. He chose to come home (I actually have no idea what would have happened if he had chosen otherwise; he was only 13, and the State of Michigan doesn't allow teens to be 'liberated' until they're 16)
From then until he graduated from high school (by the very thinnest possible skin of his teeth), things were never as bad as they were that summer, but they were never good, either. Somewhere along the line, he developed a real problem with authority. He was oppositional, defiant, and disrespectful. He lied and stole seemingly without conscience, always managing to stay one step shy of getting his ass thrown to the curb. Sort of an ongoing, slow-motion train wreck.
Now, you can imagine that all that was plenty to deal with, if he were our only child, but we had seven others besides him. We were constantly forced to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy dealing with the 3M-fires, while the other kids (who might actually pay attention to what we said) got less than their share of our scarce resources.
The saddest part of the whole thing was the 'ripple effect' that spread out from 3M's misbehavior. In some ways, we really 'found out who our friends were'. Several folks sort of withdrew from us - either they didn't want our wicked kid to 'contaminate' their kid (which, honestly, I understand), or they started to have doubts about us, for not being able to do better at raising our son. I can't bring myself to be angry about it - I understand their misgivings - but it was very hurtful, and disillusioning.
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In school, 3M always craved the elusive elixir of 'coolness' - more than anything else, he wanted to be 'popular'. It never happened for him, at least not to anything like the degree that he wanted, so he started acting more and more outrageously, in a vain attempt to win social status. When the other kids still wouldn't give him what he wanted, he just raised the level of outrageousness, until finally, in 7th grade, the Catholic school we sent him to told him to find another school for 8th grade.
That summer, between 7th and 8th grades (2001), he met a girl, and went completely ape-shit nuts over her. I won't rehash all the gory details, except to say that, all through that summer, he would regularly run away from home, for days at a time, to go see the girl.
He told the girl's parents how abusive and violent we were, and that I would "probably shoot" him if he showed up at home. Thus, a police officer appeared at our door asking me if I owned a gun (I didn't, and never have). A few days after that, a State of Michigan social worker came to our house and spent several hours trying to catch us acting abusive and violent (she didn't; in fact, we have documentation on file with the State of Michigan that we are a stable, loving family - how many of you can say that?). For a few days we didn't know for sure whether our other kids would be taken from us or not.
That fall, the situation came to enough of a head that he was admitted to a 'halfway house' program for troubled teens; he physically lived in the 'halfway house' for two weeks, and we had counseling sessions every other evening. At the end of the time, we gave him a choice - either come home and live under our authority, of find another place to live. He chose to come home (I actually have no idea what would have happened if he had chosen otherwise; he was only 13, and the State of Michigan doesn't allow teens to be 'liberated' until they're 16)
From then until he graduated from high school (by the very thinnest possible skin of his teeth), things were never as bad as they were that summer, but they were never good, either. Somewhere along the line, he developed a real problem with authority. He was oppositional, defiant, and disrespectful. He lied and stole seemingly without conscience, always managing to stay one step shy of getting his ass thrown to the curb. Sort of an ongoing, slow-motion train wreck.
Now, you can imagine that all that was plenty to deal with, if he were our only child, but we had seven others besides him. We were constantly forced to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy dealing with the 3M-fires, while the other kids (who might actually pay attention to what we said) got less than their share of our scarce resources.
The saddest part of the whole thing was the 'ripple effect' that spread out from 3M's misbehavior. In some ways, we really 'found out who our friends were'. Several folks sort of withdrew from us - either they didn't want our wicked kid to 'contaminate' their kid (which, honestly, I understand), or they started to have doubts about us, for not being able to do better at raising our son. I can't bring myself to be angry about it - I understand their misgivings - but it was very hurtful, and disillusioning.
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