And Then My Kids were Doing it...

I was talking with my Hita this morning.  We have coffee via telephone about once a week.  We were talking about how different and how hard it is to be parents at this stage of life.  You don't have little kids anymore - you have these adults.  And it's weird. 

They are all independent and stuff.  They don't have to listen to you or follow your rules anymore.  You can't just say to them, "No!  You aren't doing that.  Why?  Because I said so, that's why!"

They are OUT there, in the big, wide world living their own lives, making their own decisions and you HOPE that you have given them the tools they need to stand on their own, and do the right things.  To make good decisions and be smart and be good and brush your teeth twice a day and don't spit in public and don't drink and drive and have safe sex and be careful and aware when you are out and don't drink too much and...well...the list goes on and on.

But when I think what I was up to and what I was doing at 16 or 20 or 24, I worry about "my kids".  Because I have BEEN 16 and 20 and 24.  And I know it may seem to some of you - the kids - that it was a loooooong time ago, I remember it like it was yesterday....

*cue the mist, the fade to black and the "Granny has a flashback" music*

Hita and I were 16. I had turned 16 in January and had the crappiest car - affectionately known as The Tank - in all of the Denver Metro Area.  She was an ugly beast but she was mine.  Hita had turned 16 about two weeks before the incident.  It was spring break.  It was 100% THIS time of year.  RIGHT now.  Only it was 1985, so our hair was big and the music was better.

Hita and I and Sidekick (the names are always changed to protect the guilty but you KNOW who YOU are) talked Sidekick's older brother into buying us booze.  A fifth of Peppermint Schnapps.  I'm not going to say that I didn't drink because I was driving, cuz I did - more's the pity - I sipped on that bottle 3-4 times...maybe 5-6.  Hita and the Sidekick DRANK.  Hita and Sidekick got DRUNK.  I was a sober 16 year old girl in charge of two very DRUNK friends.  And when that happens, there's no way things are going to end well.  Sidekick was wandering down the dark street claiming she was going to walk home, whilst Hita was puking up Peppermint Schnapps all over the back floor of The Tank.  And that is the gift that keeps on giving - candy canes have been out of the question ever since. 

I got Sidekick home. (She was still ambulatory and for that, I have been forever grateful.) Safely into her own house.  I got Hita out of the window well at my first husband's house. (which is an whole other story and I don't want to bore you with ALL the details) All I had to do was get her home.  Only she'd passed out by the time we got to her house.  I either had to carry her in or leave her in the yard.  I was 16 but I knew that wasn't the right thing to do.  I couldn't believe my luck!  Her mom wasn't there! I had this idea that I would just put her in her bed and get the hell out of there.  I had dragged her half way up the stairs when her mom (not so fortuitously) came through the door.

I can laugh now at what we must have looked like to her eyes but at the time NO ONE was laughing.  She, quite understandably, turned into a dragon lady before my eyes.  She yelled!  She cursed!  I jumped a foot and dropped my Hita. Thud-slouch-slitther-thud-thud back down the stairs. Still no laughing. Her mom screamed to get out of her house and I ran like a rabbit before she could get her hands on me!

When I was 20, I packed my bags and moved to Washington DC.  Alexandria, VA to be precise but DC sounds cooler and seriously, it's all the same.  I married my first husband.  I'll call him Fred.  Fred and I were in school together when we were 16.  He moved back to CA with his family but we were best mates on the phone in the following years.  Back when you had to PAY for long distance! 

He had joined the Army and was stationed at Ft. Myer - in The Old Guard - Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery, and all that - very prestigious.  We hatched this plan to get married.  I would live and work in DC and make my own life there.  He would get to live off base and get a raise for being married. We'd be room mates and best mates; what could go wrong?!  Hair brained but at the time, it all made perfect sense.  I ended up staying there for...about four months.  Then, in typical hair brained plan fashion, it didn't seem like such a great idea anymore and I shagged my ass back to CO.

When I was 21, I packed my bags and moved to Sacramento, CA.  With a guy.  We don't have to change his name, cuz he is loooong gone. CA was like a dream.  I'd always wanted to live there!  I was there about six months. I came back home with some life lessons, some stories to tell and the beginnings of a decade long drug addiction.  Needless to say, I'd been up to no good.

When I was 24, I packed everything into a pickup and a VW Bug and moved to a wee town in Western CO.  I had a better plan this time.  I'd gotten a job with the BLM over the phone, rented an apartment sight unseen, in a town I'd never been to before in my life.  Did I mention it was WEE?  Population about 3,000 souls.  One grocery store, two bars, 10 churches.  It was like a setting in a book and I was the proverbial city mouse.  A fish completely out of water!  Still pretty hair brained but I came to love my life in Meeker.  I became who I was meant to become in many ways.  I'd been looking for my place in this world in big cities; I found it in the sticks.  I loved my job.  I loved my friends.  I loved the area.  I loved.  Then I let that drug addiction take it all away.  I fell back into my no good ways and I lost it all - the job, the friends, the place.  I had to get out or go crazy, so once again...I went home.  I did get to keep Bob.  The one treasure amongst all that crap.

I've made so many bad decisions. For so long, every time I was faced with a choice, I chose badly.  So when I look at "my kids", I see all the choices that are out there in this big, wide world.  I see the traps that Satan has laid for them. I know how pretty and alluring those traps can be. I see CLEARLY how easy it is to slip and I know what it costs to swim amongst sharks.  I see how I wasted so many years of my life; fighting against that slippery slope.  I know what it feels like to live in the dark.  To think of "my kids" - those bright and shining little beings, whom I have loved so well - making some of those same mistakes or falling into those same traps...well, it breaks my heart.  It makes me cry. 

It's hard to let go - to admit that they are adults who get to choose their own way.  It's hard not to say, "LISTEN TO ME! THIS IS WHAT I KNOW!"  Cuz they won't.  They think what I thought at their age - "Old people, sheesh!  I'm not stupid!  Those things won't happen to ME!  I'm smarter or faster or better than THEY were!"  But you aren't.  Trust me on this - YOU AREN'T.  I'll tell you what else I know.  There is no joy in any of it.  Real joy comes from something completely different - from spirituality, from family, from nature, from love, from respect for and pride in yourself.

At this stage in the game, I have all this experience and know all this stuff and no one will listen.  So, I pray a lot for my kids.  All the time.  They pop into my mind and I pray for them to be safe and protected, to be smart and wise, to be healthy and happy, to make wise decisions and build a brilliant future; to create today a past they can be proud of when they are 44 and looking back on their own lives.   Not to waste ONE MOMENT of their precious time chasing empty things that will only bring them complications or pain or heartache.

And I pray for me.  I ask for forgiveness; I ask for peace; and I give thanks for mercy and grace and second chances.