Dear Tyler;
It is your 19th birthday.
Last year, I felt really bad on your birthday because
even though I got to talk to you for a minute, you had better things to do than
go out to dinner with me and your dad. It is worse this year, because now we can’t even talk to you at all.
I have been thinking about you a lot as I have wondered
what to do for you.
The plan is that we will give you a new backpack with
straps for your skateboard, some new shirts, some new shoes, and gift cards to
Little Caesars, Burger King, and McDonald’s.
Then, we will leave them in the jeep and hope that you will be able to
receive a message from Kjersti about their location.
Your dad says he is planning on writing a letter to you,
to leave with your gifts.
I seem to have a much easier time writing a letter to you
that I know you are never going to read. I can say things to you in these letters that
I would never dare say to you, personally.
I am still at the point where I
feel like you don’t care one way or the other about what I have to say and that
you think everything I say is a lie, anyway. Sorry to say, but these feelings come from many years of having words like that spewed at
me out of your mouth.
It is hard to believe that you are 19 years old. I wish time hadn’t gone by so fast and that
you were still a little boy. Maybe if I
knew then, what I know now, I could have done something differently than I did, which might have influenced you to make better choices. But, I will never know, I guess. Or, maybe your oppositional defiant nature
may have overruled anything that I did, no matter what it was.
I know that I would have changed my opinion and actions
about school if I had to do it over again.
You are so smart and have so much ability to achieve true greatness,
that I pushed you harder and wanted you to perform more than your motivational
skills were prepared for. When I
perceived that you weren’t trying and weren’t willing to go the extra mile, I
came down too hard on you and yelled at you too much. I admit that and I regret it. I do feel though, that I can’t be blamed for
wanting you to prove to your teachers and the world that you are extremely
intelligent and capable of achieving anything that you set your mind to.
I still believe those things about you and always will
desire that you find a way to see that in yourself and then work to find out what
your dreams and goals are. I want
to be there to see you recognize the true greatness that is waiting to manifest
itself in you.
From the day that you first arrived in our home, I loved
you with all of my heart and soul. I
devoted my entire being to make sure that you were taken care of and given numerous
opportunities to try new things—from soccer to bowling to chess club. I wanted you to be happy and to be able to
have many interests to keep you occupied.
I don’t know what you think about how I used to drive you and your
friends to skate parks and then sit there and wait for two or three hours for
you, but I liked doing it and I liked that I could take you to do something
that you enjoyed doing. I wanted your
friends to think that you had a cool mom so that maybe you would think so, too.
I wished I had known how to handle your oppositional
defiance better, so that when you just absolutely refused to do something, I
could have dealt with it better than I did.
You might be learning this now that you are in the workforce--that when
you need someone to do something and they absolutely refuse to do it, it is
very frustrating. I didn’t want to be a
frustrated, demanding, yelling mom and I am so sorry that I turned into one
when I was pushed past the point of knowing what to do to get you to cooperate.
I always hoped that the time I spent with you when we
read all of those many, many books together would have helped to overshadow the
bad times. I loved reading to you and
loved being able to spend hours and hours every week with you. I thought that you liked it, too. Maybe there aren’t too many moms that
actually read all of the Harry Potter books, the Eragon books, and the
Animorphs books with their child like I did. Possibly, deep down you have
good memories of those times.
I look at pictures of you and remember
all of the things that we did to try to have fun together as a family and
regret the fact that we haven’t had that at all in the last few years. Remember when we went to Mexico and there was a crab in the swimming pool? That always makes me laugh. Then, more recently, we went to Zions Canyon and gave you
that new camera and saw you learn to take pictures and watched you see the
world through new eyes. I thought you had discovered a new way to see the world
from that point on and I was so proud of you.
Then, when you and I went to Bryce Canyon for your birthday and I saw
adventure and joy in your manner as you hiked around and experienced the beauty
of the area through the camera lens, I thought we were moving toward a great
future for you. As you and I brainstormed late
into the night about the possibilities that could have been
available to you with a career in photography, I was so excited that you wanted
to do all of those amazing things. I loved that you wanted to help other kids
not make the same mistakes that you knew you had made and that you wanted to
make a difference in the world.
I will treasure those days that I had with you more than
you will ever know and I tear up in my eyes and mind when I think about it.
I wish life could have continued in that direction for
you. I wish we would have had a chance
to make some of those plans come to life.
But,right after that mother/son road trip, the beginning of the school year drew near with
the conflicts and pressures that come with it.
Soon, you were right back to where you had been the year before at the
beginning of the school year— uncooperative, angry, and unwilling to keep up
with aiming for the positive like you had been just a few weeks before.
Now it is four years later and even though school isn’t
the issue that comes between us, something else is. You never have gotten over being angry and
mad at us and the anger has just seemed to grow and grow.
I don’t know when it will happen, but I hope someday, you
will stop being mad at us for everything that has ever happened to you and that
you will remember and feel the love that we have always had for you and will
always have for you.
I don’t know what you will be doing this year on your
birthday, but I hope you can find some true enjoyment in the day and will
somehow feel deep within you that your parents and your family members love you
very much and want to wish you a Happy Birthday.
Love,
Mom
No comments:
Post a Comment