dear son

dear son,

you are a young man now, halfway through your sixteenth year, and quickly moving toward the freedoms and privileges of being a male in this modern society. as your mother (and a woman) i have tried to instill a sense of decency within you that would override any deficiency that you may ever feel stunted by, always pushing you to persist and never allowing you to give up without an honest attempt at success. maybe i pushed too hard; this is always a concern for a mom i imagine, particularly one who has often driven herself mad with the view through the glass ceiling. i am sorry that i allowed my own goals for achievement to cloud my parenting. this is a choice that i reflect upon and struggle with regularly.

school, your schooling, your intelligence and desire to explore in a very unstructured manor have always been important to me. when you were young and i found myself seated at conference tables across from administrators and educators who’d had years, if not decades of experience in working with young men who are strong-willed, i spoke up and shared my views on how important it was for you to learn in a way that worked for you. refusing to admit defeat and letting learned academians know that you marched to your own beat and we, your father and i, would do nothing to disturb your rhythm, regardless that their goal was conformity.

time passed and you continued to struggle, each year finding it more difficult to keep up with the class’ pace. your delays were never due to an inability to understand the work or the concepts presented, instead an overall lack of interest in fitting into the structure of an environment dependent on timelines and learning through route memorization. i continued to rally the teams, maintaining contact with the school and always being available, going so far as becoming a substitute at your school with the hope that maybe a sense of immediate accountability would bring you into line. despite my helicopter parent-like attempts nothing seemed to work and you continued to spend your days inside of yourself, not seeming to care about the consequences that you were always finding yourself the victim.

sadly i allowed my own life to dampen my drive and fight and your middle school years were ones you survived with very little support. aside from me losing my ability to control my emotions every now and then, tossing your room as a result and feeling remorseful immediately after, i remained hands-off and gave you the space to fuck up. your self-confidence increased during those years and i felt proud of how beautifully you’d become your own person, owning your spirit and balancing the work of being a boy while trying to navigate early-adolescence in the midst of shit-storm that was our homelife.

high school began with much hope, from both of us. you had convinced me that you had matured and were ready to take control of things. of course my excitement and optimism was quickly replaced by sadness and disappointment as you immediately lost your footing in an intensive program that you’d applied for and been admitted, and were falling behind dramatically in all of your coursework. i realized that your ability to function in a standard learning environment would always be a challenge and that you were incapable of structuring your responsibilities as a student in a way that would garner academic success. this was crushing but still i refused to give up. summers eaten up by virtual coursework, grade forgiveness for the subjects you didn’t feel interest for and neglected to the point of failure, your frustration a ringing in my ears most days. the college-level course you attempted during freshman year given up on and holding a solid F on your transcript. thus bringing everything else down and only serving to remind me of your ability to quit things without a second thought. a trait that hits very close to home and took me many years to overcome.

now we are looking at your junior year and only ten weeks into the first semester your grades are terrible, mostly F’s due to a lack of drive in the first month. november winking and you are still trying to complete last year’s failed coursework through summer school, which i imagine adds a burden to your heart making completion an inconceivable goal. not wanting to add fuel to this burning fire but also acknowledging the obvious, i am struggling, alone, to help. this last year, your father working through his own life and unable to be the parent that you need, i have tried to adjust but cannot be a dad to a man of nearly seventeen. i find myself entirely helpless most days, certain that your future is as bleak as mine once looked.

so now we are at a crossroads and falling prey to angry words and actions. i worry for you because i know how this world can gobble a person whole, feeling a failure as a parent if i did not recognize the perilous position you are facing (to many i imagine my concerns must seem frivolous, formal education unnecessary and college hardly compulsory. and i believe their opinions are valid, for them). which is why i put these words down and feel so strongly in this moment. my heart is hurting for you, son. however i can no longer support your cavalier attitude or inability to appreciate the education that you have been granted all of these years. it is now time for you to become a man and decide what is important, whether that is school or a career path. if we were abroad things would be different, you’d be readying yourself for a much stiffer penalty, manhood coming earlier and with a broader sense of responsibility, but you have had the luxury of growing up in the states, protected and entitled, unaware of the many privileges that you take for granted on a daily basis.

going on would be easy and there is much to say, but my own guilt in allowing you to manipulate the situation when i often felt pressured to be the “kinder, gentler” parent has eaten up much of my insides and i am very little more than a shell of the parent i’d hoped to be at this stage. i could have done better and wish that i had better role models, but as most parents will admit, i had only what i knew to work with and learned the rest along the way, at times not as completely as i’d hoped. in time you will become a father i imagine, and will understand the struggle of being a parent. it is my hope that your patience will always be greater than mine has been, and that you don’t struggle with the need to compensate for rearing a child in a broken home filled with adversity.

you’ll probably never read this words, son, unless of course you happen into my world and discover that your mother had an existence of her own that you had not the interest to pry or the awareness to suspect, but if you do i hope that you will not read anger into my words and will instead see concern lacing each paragraph.

love,

your mother