...all any parent can ever want is to hope that at some point they understand their children. Whether it be the babbling toddler who is yelling they want something, but you have no idea what 'GAB TATG' means. Whether it be the drama queen 4 year old, who has to throw a birthday party everyday with decorations for her stuffed animal. Whether it be the overly verbal 7 year old who talks faster than his mouth will allow, constantly making me ask, 'Pardon?'. Then there's the quiet, slightly self indulged 9 year old, who keeps most everything to himself, which is an oddity in this house...he keeps it to himself, until he just can't....
After an evening of wondering if something was wrong with my quiet 9 year old, asking rather fervently if everything was okay, and getting, '...yeah, I'm fine...'. The night ended however, with the ever going debate of why he wasn't allowed to do something. I thought I answered it correctly, still asking him if something was wrong. No? Good....until Abe came down to tell me that Oscar was planning to run away....hmmm.
I quickly formulated a plan, my slightly pathetic '80s cop drama version of 'good cop/bad cop'...at this point I'm not sure if I'm Cagney or Lacey? I walked in the room, looked at him and said, "...well, sport, if you're planning to run away, you'll need a bag,(opening his closet door) I wouldn't bother packing pajamas, you'll probably just have to start sleeping in your clothes. I guess my best advice would be to pack light, and have a couple of clean pairs of underwear..." To which I walked into another room to find a backpack. I came back and he was steadily pulling out shirts from his drawer...bad cop messes up.
I came back into their room and asked him to sit down. I asked him if he knew how hard it would be? I asked him if he'd thought this out? I asked him for seven reasons to run away. If he could give me seven, concrete reasons, who was I to stand in his way of happiness? While he was thinking, I told him that I needed to remind him of something. He had no place to go. He had no money. He had very little street smarts. He had no job....and if he left, it would leave a horrible hole in our family.
I told him, that in actuality, if he thought it was his turn to run away...to get in line, it's not. BUT, I haven't ran away, I haven't given up on us, and damn it, if any one earned that right it was me...but I haven't, I'm sticking it out...the least he could do was stick it out too. So, still blankly staring at me, I asked him if he could tell me what he wanted, maybe I could try to help/fix it? This kid is stone cold. He doesn't let his emotions show. With this one question, his eyes started welling up with tears...finally, he said..."...I just want a DAD..."
I told him, I didn't blame him. I told him I would be pretty sick of me, and that's all I pretty much wanted for him too...not a replacement, but someone to fill in the gap in his heart that is missing. I had to lower the boom, that it took me six years to get married the first time. The look of exasperation on his face was priceless. I told him that the one thing that this house sorely NEEDED was patience. Our scale isn't just low on it, but we have sunk backward into negative double digits. But, the beauty of this whole thing is, our hearts are telling us that we are ready for a-dare-to-be-great-situation...what the future holds might be frightening, mainly because it's unknown, but it also can be exciting to comprehend the possibilities of what wonderful things might happen.
The conversation was ended by me asking for the final time of the evening, if he was okay and if he'd sleep on the decision to run away, at least until he had a game plan...to which he said yes. I told him, all I really want for my four gifted monsters, was a normal life again, but it was just going to take some time. The last thing he said to me was a 'would you rather'...which I thought was interesting...Would you rather have a mean husband and a million dollars, or a nice husband and a thousand dollars? To which I told him that was a no brainer, a nice husband is worth a billion dollars...
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