Parenting is funny because you spend years repeating yourself, correcting things, worrying about whether they are listening to a damn thing you say, and then every once in a while they do something that makes you realize they were paying attention the entire time.
Maybe not when you told them to clean their room. Definitely not when you told them for the 47th time to put something back where they found it. But the important stuff? Somehow, that got through.
I wrote recently about always making my kids a priority, and I realized there is another side to why I have always been that way.
I wanted to raise men who care about people.
Not just men who are successful, responsible, independent and capable of taking care of themselves. Obviously, I wanted all of that too. But I also wanted them to understand love, empathy and the value of showing up for people.
One of the things I love most about my mom is that at 45 years old, I still know I have my mom.
There is something incredibly comforting about knowing there is a person in this world you can call and you don’t have to calculate whether you’re asking too much. You don’t have to wonder if you’re inconveniencing them. You don’t have to earn their support. You just know they’re there.
My boys have always had that with me.
And before anyone takes that to mean I raised two spoiled men who think Mommy is going to come rescue them from every bad decision they make, absolutely not. 😂 If you created the problem yourself, we may first have a brief discussion about how exactly we arrived here.
But if you genuinely need me? I’m coming.
This weekend I got to see what that looks like when it comes back around.
I was in Boston visiting my son and was supposed to fly home Sunday evening. My flight was canceled, and what followed was basically an airport hostage situation. Hours at the airport, two hours waiting to get my checked bag back, trying to find another flight home, and eventually booking one for 5:00 the next morning.
By the time I figured everything out, my son had already driven around all day and had finally made it back to his dorm. He had an early day the next morning, and my new flight was boarding at 4:30 a.m.
I did the math.
If he drove the 30 minutes back to get me, took me to his dorm, and then brought me back to the airport, this poor kid was basically going to take a nap and call it a night’s sleep.
So I told him absolutely not.
I would buy myself a blanket, find a spot in the airport and sleep there. Was it glamorous? No. Was I thrilled about sleeping at Logan Airport like I had suddenly become an unwilling contestant on Survivor: Terminal C? Also no. But I wasn’t going to make him do all of that for me.
His answer was immediate.
“Mom, absolutely not. I cannot leave you at an airport. You would never do that to me, and I will never do that to you.”
Well.
There goes my airport blanket plan.
He had literally just gotten back to his dorm, and that poor boy turned around, drove all the way back to get me, brought me to his dorm, slept for maybe two hours, got back up and drove me right back to the airport.
No attitude. No complaining. No making me feel like I had ruined his night.
And somewhere between being exhausted, annoyed at the universe and wondering why I apparently needed three separate forms of transportation just to get from Boston to Miami, I had this moment of realizing:
This is it.
This is why I parented the way I did.
Not so my children would feel indebted to me one day. Not so they would grow up and “take care of Mom.” I have my own life, and I fully expect them to have theirs.
I did it because I wanted them to understand that people matter.
I wanted them to know that sometimes love is inconvenient.
Sometimes love is a 30-minute drive you really don’t feel like making.
Sometimes love is two hours of sleep.
Sometimes love is saying, “I’m coming to get you,” even when the person you love is insisting they’ll be fine.
We spend so much time trying to teach our kids through words, but I don’t think that’s how they learn most of this.
They learn how to love by how they were loved.
They learn empathy because someone cared about how they felt.
They learn to show up because someone kept showing up for them.
They learn that time is valuable because someone willingly gave them theirs.
My mom gave that to me. I gave it to my boys. And apparently, while I was busy wondering whether they were listening all these years, they were watching.
There are plenty of things I probably got wrong as a mother. Every parent has those.
But standing in Logan Airport at an ungodly hour, running on almost no sleep, I realized there is one thing I know I got right.
I raised men who show up.
And I’ll take that win.
