It is interesting to contemplate; this relationship between sons and their mothers.

Especially when the mother in question is parenting on her own.

I have talked extensively in this space about my darling daughter: her wit, her intelligence, her perseverance in the face of circumstances that might hobble another child.
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But I don't say nearly as much about my son.

​Possibly because, in my own mind, I'm not really sure how to talk about him.

There is a certain group of mothers whose sons can do no wrong.  No matter what is going on in their lives, their sons are heroes.  Everything they touch turns to gold, or will, eventually.  In all honesty, they have every right to be proud of the accomplishments their sons have made.  They have made every correct turn, always taken the right path, and have remained steadily on course for eventual success.

​On the other end of the spectrum are the mothers whose sons made terrible choices, and are either incarcerated, dead, or well on their way to either fate.  Some of these mother tried everything they could to make sure that their sons had decent lives, but in the end, none of that mattered.  This is NOT the way their sons were raised, and the man they see is not the boy they saw growing up.  This is the group most vilified in popular media.  Especially if there was no father in the home.  The reason for the absence of the male parent doesn't matter; there was no male role model, so any and all parenting was pre-determined to end in failure.

And then there are those sons that fall into neither group.  Neither reaching the lofty heights of perceived success, nor the terrifying lows of a life gone tragically off course.  They are flailing somewhere in the middle, quite literally neither here, nor there.  Sometimes they are continuing their education post high school; sometimes they are working; most times they have no idea what they really want to do.  They are not bad people, often telling those that inquire about their latest change in direction because in all honesty they've changed their mind so many times even they can't remember what they originally wanted to do.

It is in this wispy gray area that my son exists.  Funny, talented, and utterly frustrated by his own shortcomings as he embarks on his latest run at getting his life to the point where the world determines it should be: a 23 year old should have a job, a car, and his own apartment, excuses be damned.  It is a different relationship, this one between a parent, and an adult child with an issue or two that may be hindering his ability to move as fast as his peers or get the same results.  Me, the parent, trying to be both understanding, as I have been through a great deal of this already, (with a child to take care of to boot), and nurturing but firm, without being pushy or nagging; and Him, the son, wanting badly to be the independent young man, running to make up for past missteps, and trying to deal with the issues that are preventing the move forward.  All while dealing with a certain level of snarky condescension from adults who are supposed to be in a position to help, advise, or at least encourage him get to the next steps in his journey, but are far too jaded to be of any real assistance.

As I watch him crawl, walk, run, stumble and fall, then start the process all over again in an effort to reach this or that goal, I marvel at  his willingness to keep trying until he find out what fits him in a world that expects all young people to identify a goal as soon as possible, then stick with it until the end.  There was no promotion ceremony from Elementary school or Middle school for this son. And after going far too long without any help for a learning difference, and it's related co-morbities, no high school graduation either, as he dropped out.  I observed during a frustrated conversation with him one night that I have spent most of his life waiting for him to FINISH something.  As I study his hurt, defeated and angry eyes, I realize that I just want to be able to brag about my son the way I hear my friends bragging about theirs, which is completely unfair to him.  We have come up through some strange and trying times, this young man and I, and as hard as it is for me to realize that it is even harder for him, this teetering between where he is and where he wants to be.  The burden of managing other people's expectations, as ridiculous as they sometimes are, is now on his shoulders, and he is finding that the yoke of adulthood can strangle just as fast, if not faster, than the one he wore as a child.

Occasionally, I look back over the times and struggles we've had over these last going on 24 years now, and wonder how he made it through, even when I admittedly was still learning how to be an adequate parent. I love my son, obviously, and was always determined to do right by him, even at enormous personal cost to myself, if that's what it took.  I look at him now, and see traces of both his father, and myself: His father's temperament, mellowed by my sense of the absurd; his father's hair and chin, with my eyes and nose; His father's nonchalance about most politics, mixed with my passion about issues that affect me directly. In the midst of this, he still manages to be uniquely himself, which is all he should ever be required to be.

Really, this is the story of patience for a late bloomer, in a world that expects early and continual success.  But the rose that blooms latest smells just as sweet as the rose that bloomed first.  We just have to continue to nourish, water, prune, and WAIT, until the rose is ready.  Like all things in nature, it will happen when the time is right, not when we want it to.

​As it should be.

I was born on a cool, Fall Saturday morning in 1971.

That might explain why Saturday mornings are my favorite times during the week.  It's often quiet in my house, which gives me time for prayer, devotion and reflection.  Creaking bones and sore hips and knees when I rolled out of bed one such Saturday morning, reminded me that I had driven almost 200 miles the day before, both in the course of work, and transporting a group of kids from an amusement park.  Clearly, I am not the long driving road warrior I used to be.  Time passes quickly.

I remember being a small child, running through the house, chasing my older sister.  I got my first lesson in watching where I was going when I caught a doorknob in the eye from a door my sister suddenly closed during the chase.  Mostly I remember those days as ones of tireless exploration, even if we could never wander far from the house (we were not allowed to wander anywhere our mother couldn't see us from any window in whatever house or apartment we lived in).  We always made our own adventures, playing out whatever stories we had scene enacted on our favorite cartoons, or we had read in a book earlier that week.

I remember elementary school as a time of expanding boundaries, frequent moves and learning the art of making friends quickly.  We changed schools multiple times during those years, and I rapidly figured out that if I didn't want to spend a lot of time alone, learning to read kids and seek out those willing to be friendly was going to have to become an art form I needed to master, the sooner the better for each change of location.  During that time I developed the ability to talk to anybody, at any time, about any subject you can think of or make up.  I also learned that carefully placed silences can be as comforting as conversation, and becoming a good listener is a talent few people really cultivate.  Being a constant outsider had it's advantages

Middle and High School brought some level of stability, as I was able to start and finish at the same schools, and I learned that relationships could be sustained over longer periods of time.  Here I was told that it was time to start planning my future.  Of the many iterations of What I Want To Be When I Grow Up that passed through my mind (and out of my mouth), the final two I settled on were actress or journalist.  I left high school, that became Actress (despite my crippling stage fright), Director, Producer and Writer.  I drifted far away from these goals as early motherhood became my reality, and all dreams artsy drifted into the frenzied background of a life spent in the constant care of and attention to first one, then two children. False starts, seminars, weekend classes, and eventually a sideline into IT later, all that remained was my desire to write.

I look back over my life in the 20+ years since the State of California legally declared me an adult, and I see not only a world that's changed, but a person that has had to learn and adapt to whatever the world threw at her.  Jobs, found and lost.  Frequent changes of residence.  The ups and downs of relationships.  New technology, both necessary and extraneous.  With all of these things, what I sincerely hope, is that I have learned things that will help me with my own children.  I truly believe that you learn to parent by remembering your life as a child, so that you can reference every stage they experience balanced against your own life.  We are not authoritarian strangers who don't understand what it's like to be young.  We've been where they've been, and once our children realize that we might just actually "get" them, without condemnation or condescension, we might finally find them listening to our offered wisdom and warnings.

It's not for the faint of heart, this business of shaping new adults.  Time transforms us all, from infant to child to teen to adult, with all of the lessons learned and wisdom earned along the way.  It's our job to remember, and pass what we know and all that we've learned on to the younger ones, enabling the next generation to build on whatever we started while innovating their approach.  This is how successful societies are built and sustained, and the one thing I hope will continue into the future.

In 10-15 years (Knock Wood!), I will likely add grandparent to my list of titles.  By then I will have had even more experiences to add to the education I'll be passing on to my own children.  And will be able to start anew passing on the stories, lessons and wisdom of my childhood years on to my next generation.  As I should.

When I write the names of my children and myself, I write three different last names.

Maybe you've heard of me.

I am the never married, inner city single parent.  The image that is painted of me  by the world at large is one of wanton sexual promiscuity, complete irresponsibility and damaged children.  Statistically speaking, we live in an impoverished area, we live at or near the poverty level because I don't have enough of an education to have a job making much more than minimum wage, and since mine is the only income, it is woefully inadequate.  My children will suffer from not having both parents in the home, all the studies say, and I am to blame for it all.

That's what conservative media sells their constituency, anyway.  For some people that's very true.  For SOME people.  For most of the rest of us, the truth is far more complicated and nuanced.  If you are willing to listen, there is a story there, just not the one you think it is.

Mine is a story of an insecure girl who sought to soothe her insecurity in the worst possible way, relationships with men thought to be the objects of other women's attentions.  If you were to ask me what I was thinking, I would probably tell you that I thought that I could be the one to make the relationships "work" where other women had failed previously.  The fact that I believed this not once, but twice, tells you that I was either a hopeless romantic, an incurable optimist, incredibly foolish or a rotating combination of all three.  All I can say is that between romance novels and romantic comedies, there was a long stretch in my life where I had particularly unrealistic notions about relationships, and people's willingness and ability to "change" given the right circumstances.  Mercifully, I figured it out at the two child mark, but some women take far longer, and unfortunately, are the ones who turn bitter after the reality that you can't change people sets in.

But as much as I admit to making two extremely poor choices (based on looks alone) in relationships, eleven years apart, I do not regret having my children.  That's not to say that this has been an easy road.  I realized on the day of my son's birth that the majority of the responsibility for child raising was going to be on me, and I made a promise to God and myself that I was going to step up to the best of my ability.  I was one month shy of my 21st birthday with only a high school education, but I had a pleasant enough personality, a good professional demeanor, gave great "phone", and had a history of front of house type jobs (Which I didn't realize at the time meant I had kind of a pretty face. I've always thought I was funny looking.   Live and learn.), which I was able to translate into a series of receptionist jobs.  I say series because initially the only work I could get was through temp agencies, which was far from steady work (I can't begin to tell you the number of times we were evicted because I was out of work just long enough to get behind in the rent.), but it kept us afloat for 10 years.  During that time I worked my way up from Receptionist to Executive Secretary by learning on the job any skill I didn't already have.  The upshot to that, however, was that my son had a lot of issues both at school, and with his daycare, and when you are a contract employee, if you don't go to work, you don't get paid.  Which is why I missed my son's learning disabilities by so far a margin that by the time anyone was halfway willing to do anything about it, he had already given up on school.

By the time my daughter came along, I was in both a better, and a worse, spot.  I had completed trade school to learn how to repair computers, thereby turning a longtime hobby into a profession.  But my relationship with her father was already mostly over, and by the time she was six months old, we were living on my sister's living room floor.  It was a long slow crawl to the lower middle class for us.  The first step was an entry level civil service job for me at the ripe old age of 32.  The next step was a small 2 bedroom apartment in a working class suburb of the South Bay.  What was supposed to happen was for us to build from there.  But...

Our little family fits the description while blowing it out of the water.  Yes, we live paycheck to paycheck.  I wanted to live in a safe-ish neighborhood, especially because of my son, and I wanted to be somewhere I could let my daughter play outside, without fear or worry.  Mercifully, where I live is about average for the region, price-wise.  I drive an eight year old used car, but there is still a car note, and insurance.  I tried mightily to live without a car on several occasions, and so long as I had no life outside work or church, living without a car was doable.  The minute I wanted to do anything at night, or in any of the outlying suburbs at odd hours, there was an issue. My son did drop out of high school, and is struggling because of it, but so are many other young men and women with untreated ADHD and other learning disabilities.  The ADHD, by the way, is hereditary.  I have it, as does my daughter.  If you can tell from the title of this blog, there are three people in this house that have fairly serious social, emotional, concentration and organization issues.

Nobody knows how or why, but somehow, we make it work.  Despite what you may have heard about young Black males without a high school education, my son has not only NOT become a criminal, he has never been in any major trouble.  My daughter is an academic superstar, with the social behaviors exhibited by natural introverts, preferring to be alone with electronics or with a good book as often as with other people.  Whatever they end up believing later on in life, I gave them a Christian foundation so that they would both have some spiritual grounding, as well as an extended church family.  I have always encouraged communication between the fathers and the children.  Note:  I said between the FATHERS and the CHILDREN.  I have also made it very clear that the state of these relationships are the responsibility of the father, as I would neither force these relationships, nor discourage them.  I would only intervene if there were absolutely no other way to resolve an issue.  My son has chosen to have limited contact with his father; my daughter's relationship with her father is, much like the Facebook status,  "complicated" (see earlier statement about only intervening if I had to).

You won't hear about my little family on the news of course.  We are the OK square pegs that simply do not fit in the dysfunctional round holes that society would have you believe we should be in.  We are far from perfect, obviously.  I get frustrated with all the new parenting methods and I yell.  My restless, impatient son is drifting between goals, and trying to figure out what to do with himself.  My daughter is in the throws of an ADHD enhanced pre-teen life, and it's attached emotionalism.  Quite normal, actually.

No one is suffering from a lack of anything.  Sometimes we run out of things, or have to wait until payday.  We are three people getting through life, day by day.  Nothing remarkable or extraordinary.  Which doesn't sell newspapers or political agendas.

Which is why you've never heard of me.  Or any of the rest of us.  And you never will.