parents: part one

Our parents always said, "Just wait until you have kids!" Well now I have a child and finally I am able to  understand what they were talking about all these years. Child rearing is not easy, not one little bit. If you have been keeping up with this little blog of mine then you have read my trials and tribulations with our wild child. Raising him in my shop was not easy and there were times I was not proud of my behavior. I was not always patient and kind and soft-spoken. Our lives were hectic and unstable and the economy had crashed. My husband and I were working two jobs, raising our first child, and dealing with disappointment after disappointment when job interviews fell through. Working in a restaurant was not ideal either for it was a late night lifestyle with an early morning riser. We were shell-shocked and bleary-eyed and thought WTF did we do?! Through the past five years we have quit the restaurant job, accepted, very begrudgingly, the economic state of our country, and realized that just having a job is good enough for now. We are happy, healthy, and oh, this child. This child, my 5 year old going on 15 is the best thing to happen to us. He makes us want to be better, nicer, and more patient. I now know what it feels like to unselfishly give to another. Please, don't get me wrong, there are still times when I want the last cookie or I want to buy myself something new instead of another new Lego kit, but watching the little man's joy over his Legos warms my heart. His joy is so bountiful, so honest. As I raise my son I reflect on my childhood and my parents. Family vacations in the car with the fat basset hound and car sick mother. My father especially loved the puking pit stops he'd have to make. To this day that white church at the beach is forever known as "where mom puked". Fighting with my sister over everything. Listening to my parents bicker, my mother all hurricane fury and my father retreating to his office to escape. Christmas Eve traditions with Nat King Cole and finger food. My mother loves finger food. Friday night pizza. Baseball games with my father. Woody Allen movies where my father would giggle and my mother declaring the actor an ass. Listening to her roar with laughter over Peter Seller's Pink Panther movies. My sister and I every Christmas declaring a truce to sleep in her bed and wait for Santa. Now, my parents are divorced. Two people who loved each other madly yet were oil and water when mixed. All that bickering couldn't keep them together. As I think about their marriage and my marriage I can't help but see similarities. My husband and I are complete opposites. I am the hurricane fury like my mother and he is the calm one like my father. I have often wondered if our fate will be like theirs. I have often wondered if all my manic energy will deplete our love for each other. What I have realized, what makes ours different is that we keep trying. My parents would say they kept trying yet one gave up and the other had no choice. Life works like that sometimes. I love my husband implicitly and have learned through thick and thin, don't give up, for he is the only one for me. Yes, my child's memories will hold flashes of bickering and yelling yet he will also remember dada grabbing mama's butt in the kitchen or us holding hands or kissing in the ocean. There will be road trips to the beach with mama's recently acquired motion sickness and that almost incident on the tea cups at the carnival. There will be dogs and old Christmas carols and fancy finger food. Sports and movies and pizza, there's always pizza. As a parent you want to give your child everything and then some. There are good memories and there will also be bad memories, but they will be his memories. His memories to draw upon as he becomes an adult and starts his life separate from us. So to my son I give him my past, my present, and my future. May he always do the right thing with what he's given and may he never give up or forget to love. Good night world.