Parenting

My favorite quote regarding parenting is that “it’s the hardest job you’ll ever love.”

My own experience is tempered to some extent by the fact that I only ever had the joy of parenting one child. A lot of parents who contend (or are contending) with parenting multiple children almost think that parenting a single child shouldn’t really count towards the claim of being a parent. I would certainly agree that a single child is simpler than multiples but I don’t believe the difficulty factor is linear.

My parenting experience was also fashioned by the fact that my son’s mother and I split up when my son was 8 years old. I wrestled and probably still wrestle with being the “absentee parent” for 5 of out of my son’s 7 day week from the ages of 8 through 21.

I did assume the role of dad though on most every weekend in those years. Some of what I consider to be my most treasured father/son moments occurred during the travel times that we each endured during what was slightly more than an hour’s ride each way that every weekend became the bookends for our weekend get-togethers.

We endured the pains of teenage angst and the problems that most every teenager inflicts on their parents and at times it certainly seemed that we feared that our decisions or direction wasn’t sufficient or incorrect.

I was always comforted when I met my son’s friends and listened to the stories of his activities. I was glad that we had a relationship with sharing those things was relatively easy. It seemed to me in watching my son develop socially that he was making a lot of good decisions. He never seemed to be any kind of disciplinary problem at school. He had difficulty with grades and getting homework done but, I could tell by the associations and friendships that he was developing that he had a real good head on his shoulders and had a well developed sense of right from wrong.

Once he graduated from high school (barely) the next few years were tough. I think they were very tough for him and for us as his parents. He “tried out” college a couple of times in the ensuing three years but, both times he was unsuccessful in making anything stick. He still seemed to be looking for direction. He also seemed to be withdrawing from society. He would sleep all day and spend his nights on the Internet engaged in online games, chats and whatever else was striking his fancy.

I got increasingly worried during that three year period and whenever I attempted to engage him in conversation on this, he would either shrug me off saying he didn’t want to talk about it. His attempts to assure that he was okay and that I shouldn’t worry didn’t help much.

Then one day, he approached me with the news that he wanted to move to Illinois. I was understandably curious and asked for rationale to support this new claim. He said he wanted to go back to school but he wanted to move to Illinois and attend a community college there. I pointed out that there was a plethora of community colleges within our native upstate New York and that as an “out of state” citizen, he would wind up paying more at an Illinois institution. He said that he had some friends out there who were willing to help him establish residency. He had already established a mailing address and that as a result of this action, he would only be charged the “out of state” rates for a reduced time frame and that he then planned on transferring to Eastern Illinois University. I again was curious but, all my arguments fell onto deaf ears and plans were being made for him to make this “big move.”

He enrolled in that community college. He did transfer to his chosen college (EIU), finishing his undergraduate work and graduated Summa Cum Laude all within the four years of announcing this move. On his graduation day, there wasn’t a prouder dad on the face of the planet. It wasn’t just that he had finally put his mind and effort towards a goal and accomplished it. It was because of the person he had now become.

I came to realize that part of what drove him to move to Illinois was a special friendship that he had with a girl he met during the online activities that he was pursuing while spending most of the daylight hours sacked out on a couch. The relationship that they had blossomed over that four year period and the year he graduated they announced their engagement. A year or so later at their wedding, again, you would be hard pressed to find a dad who was more proud or happy of what his son had accomplished and become.

They married the day before father’s day in 2011. The marriage ceremony and reception was nothing short of perfect and even though they felt like giving both dad’s a father’s day present the next day, they had already given us the best present a dad could ever hope for. They had extended our family, shown that they had a good circle of friends and family as a support group, they had a plan for the future and the ability to achieve whatever they put their mind to.

A Key West Sojourn

The first two flights went off with nary a hitch...

Then we got to Miami...

We had a scheduled layover of just under an hour... We picked up a bite to eat (The orange peel and two pretzel sticks they gave us on the previous three hour flight had worn off) and proceeded to our gate ten minutes ahead of our "boarding time" - 2:45pm.

We met our fellow castaways; the professor and the Howell's were already there...

Total five passengers were scheduled to fly out on a 9-passenger capacity stick of gum with a wing nut and rubber band....

The highly efficient "chatty Cathy's" that were manning the gate podium we're engaged in a tense debate about the relative merit's of "Rosalita's Ninos" and apparently didn't make an association that time to board the plane had come and gone and that's why all five of us had visited the podium with questions about the status of the flight.

They finally thought it best to make an announcement over the PA system which resulted in a debate on who should make the announcement...when all five passengers are staring bullet holes through their skulls standing not ten feet away.

Anyway, the story that was relayed was that the flight was delayed because "the crew" was "tied up" in Customs.

I knew the lucky streak was bound to end at some point...

So we sat.... I did ask why the "tying up at customs of the crew members wasn't factored into their scheduling and after a little gnashing of teeth, they added "well the flight was late getting back from Cuba."

We were then visited by three large uniformed law enforcement officers with handguns and several stern looking suits who proceeded to confer with the "chatty Cathy's" (in Spanish of course) about the status of flight 9130... (A small sigh of relief because our flight was 9131).

The arrival of the cops with guns did create a bit more space at the podium because the five passengers all decided to back off about ten paces. I started investigating car rental avenues at this point.

Well about an hour and a half later, the skipper and his first mate (Juan and Carlos) were sprung from Customs and we were finally on our way...

We checked into the hotel and did a fairly intensive pub-crawl last night finally getting back to the room at around 1:00.

It seems the kid can drink... He held his own and was able to walk under his own steam the final block and a half from Fogerty's... He lost his capacity for intelligible speech during our stay at Sloppy Joe's an hour earlier and I believe was on autopilot while we listened to the band at Fogerty's.

Anyway, I peeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth, showered and dressed and will be making my way down to Starbuck's to kill time while I'm waiting on the kid to rise...

See you later…