FGS: Coming Clean - Stories of being honest with yourself

For most things, I've been a late bloomer. Girlfriends, college, a job that pays enough to live on. I haven't seen ET yet and I still go to the bank to deposit a check. I was 51 before I had a car that would start every morning.

One thing I did early, though, was become a parent. I was 23 when my son was born and sometimes I feel like we grew up together. Twenty-three seems awfully young from where I'm sitting now. What happens when you have a kid early is that your friends start having kids right about the time yours is moving out of the house.

That's when I got to sit back and laugh at all my tired forty-something friends running down to Albertson's at 9:00 at night in a Mercedes to buy a 24-pack of Pampers. The next day they’d call and ask how I managed to survive doing it on my own in an ‘85 Toyota Corolla.

Every time someone would ask “how I did it” I'd stumble through some hackneyed response like, “Just keep showing up” or “You'd be surprised what you can do when you don't have a choice.”

But after a while, I started wondering why anyone would ask me for parenting advice. Most of them had never met my son, or even been to the house when he was growing up. They had no idea if I'd done a good job. All they ever heard were the good stories. The time Taran and I got chased around a campsite by an angry hummingbird. The evening walks down to the pond to hear the frogs singing.

Then I realized I'd never asked my son the one question every parent thinks but never says out loud. “What did I do wrong?”

As soon as I thought it, I pushed it back down. Could I even handle that answer? It's too late to do anything about it so why even bother? But I knew I had to ask him. No matter how bad the answer was, I needed to hear it. I don’t like running scared from something and this had me scared.

So I called him up. I told him about all the people who’d asked me for parenting advice and how I wasn’t sure I was qualified to give it. Then I said it. “What did I do wrong as a parent?”

He answered quickly, “You did great, dad.”

“No, really. We've had enough arguments and slammed doors. What should I have done better.”

“Dad, you did fine.”

In five seconds I’d gone from great to fine. Now I had to know. I had to take my medicine.

“Seriously, son. What did I do wrong?”

“Dad, you did the best you could.”

Now I'm not even fine. I’m down to “did the best you could.”

I asked him one more time and said to take a few days to think about it. He paused and said ok.

A week later he called back.

MEETUP ONLY ALLOWS ME A CERTAIN NUMBER OF WORDS SO CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE REST OF THE STORY AND GET THE RULES AND GUIDELINES FOR TELLING YOUR OWN AT FGS.

https://freshgroundstories.com/2024/04/26/fgs-coming-clean-stories-about-being-honest-with-yourself/