Friday at last! Hallelujah, I think. This week has been one of those nightmare weeks where weird things happen. Maybe it’s the Santa Ana winds, or maybe it’s just my turn for weirdness. Whatever it is, it’s annoying.
I had a rare phone call last night from The Eldest Son, who is generally off doing his own thing in Arizona. I usually hear from him when he’s in a crisis over something or looking for computer help. Try as I might to educate my kids on the use, care and feeding of computers, when it came to him I failed miserably.
Last night’s call was a crisis call. He’s been working on a business project with his dad and his dad decided that he’d had enough of it, and the “angry young man” attitude that The Eldest can sometimes project. The problem is that the attitude is just about a mirror of Dad, so it’s an ugly thing when they clash.
Somehow we came around to an unwarranted bitchfest of all the things that T & I did wrong with him. Some of them really made me sad, because they were so unfair. He said that he always felt like he wasn’t part of the plan, that we favored the younger ones over him, and were harder on him than anyone else. So much of this is perception….if he lived at home now he’d see that we deal with Sticks in much the same way that we dealt with him in High School. If anything, we’re probably a little bit harder on Sticks. But in the manner of all somewhat self-absorbed young men, his perception is that this was personal.
How do you answer that? Every single person out there who is a parent knows that you do your best, you make mistakes, and you try not to screw them up too badly. This is basically what I said to him. I told him that I thought some of his perceptions were unfair, but that he was certainly entitled to them. I also suggested that he forgive us for what we did wrong, because we supported him in all his endeavors, gave him what he needed and most of what he wanted, asked only that he participate in being a family member and that whatever mistakes we made were made out of love, not bitterness or meanness.
In my heart I know that he’ll have life experiences that will disabuse him of the notion that he was somehow called as “odd man out”. I have to say that T did what I consider to be a GREAT job of stepparenting. It’s a tough gig, and T did it without experience and the best he could. He didn’t have to. He chose to. Hopefully someday The Eldest will get that, and also shed those mirror glasses that seem to reflect the world back onto him, so that everything revolves around that reflection. But I have to say that the indictment cut a bit, especially in a week that has been so difficult already.
Technorati tag: parenting
