
No child chooses his parents. If they did, maybe, just maybe with hope and a prayer, they would still choose us.
I will give them benefit of the doubt though I know beyond knowing, because I birthed that child, the very deception of their statement even before they formed the first noun behind the lie. I will pretend this once I am completely naïve, just long enough to allow their guilt to overtake them. They will as the story goes "confess" the altered truth in time, their time.
I will love my children even during those times even biblically they are acting completely unlovable. The one and only time (as I did with my mother) they fix their hormonal lips to tell me they "hate" me, mostly for the effect versus the candor, I will stand stoic. I will not retaliate. I will retire to my room get in my booger to the chin cry and remember back to the one and only time I fixed my lips to say that to my parent. Then after awhile, I will emerge from my room retreat to the kitchen and cut potatoes into perfect fry wedges and call out "French fries" as if nothing ever happened. I will do this for one reason and one reason only. Because that is what I signed up for.
Parenting is not for the meager. It is completely formulated without a formula for those totally committed to creating beautiful human beings, kind of parent. And that is what you signed up for.
And so to my children I say this. When that time comes, I will tell you I like that new boyfriend or girlfriend. I will reach way down into my mommy reserve to find that one redeeming quality to like about him or her in order to keep you coming to me. I know if I run him or her off....you may very well run off with him or her. I am not willing to trade what I have built for what in an instant you define as your everything. So yes I will bite my lip down to the white meat of silence. Because that is what I signed up for.
I signed up to love you always and forevermore. I signed up to mold and shape your character. To correct your incorrigible ways and right your crooked self-destruction. I signed up to be there for you even when you push me back.
I signed up and with my heart signature know that I would not trade being your mom for anything!
Signed, mom.