Amazing

Amazing

My parents didn’t approve of my boyfriend. This was many years ago, one of those early crushes where you feel you are literally going to die if it doesn’t work out. In other words, fourteen…

He lived nearby, so my parents knew him by sight, and neighborhood opinions… Of course, the neighbors they listened to were grown-ups. They had grown up opinions about the wild energetic boy who lived nearby. I didn’t fit in his group then, so I never paid attention, but then I hit fourteen and suddenly, he was amazing! (Probably fueled by all the other girls having a crush on him…)

Well, he liked me too, and so we started hanging out. My parents had serious opinions. So, Jared and I decided to sneak out one night.

The plan was, I would turn on my lamp as soon as the parents got locked into the TV show they watched. I’d send down my jacket, and my wallet and stuff, in a bucket from my upstairs bedroom window, lowering it quietly with a string. Jared would get it, and I would go down in my pajamas, pretending I was getting some food from the kitchen. I had real clothes under the pajamas.

It all went well. From the kitchen I yelled “I got some cookies! Going back to bed now, goodnight!” into the living room, and then I sneaked out the door. How could I know we were totally out of cookies…? and how smart my mother was to immediately pick up on it… I was grounded for a week! And Jared, not choosing to wait… immediately found another girlfriend! The jerk.

To this day, me now married, with two kids of my own, try daily to live up to my mother, as a mother.
She was amazing.