Colton, my Marine Corps dreaming baby boy... is dating. I am sooooooooooo not ready for this.
I mean who am I to guide this young man on this journey? I have yet to figure out the complexities of it. I do not know how to adequately steer him in the least bit. I am profoundly unqualified, and yet it is my god given job, duty, and right. How does one teach your child to protect themselves. Make concrete decisions for their lives and stick with them. How to not let the opposite sex steal your life goals, and inner most dreams, intentionally or not. And how does one convey that it can and does happen every single day.
I am fearful for him. Dating sucks, and he is too young to even realize that yet. I have a friend who repeatedly asks me "What does Dez want?" What do I want? This has been, in the past, hard for me to answer, but in the light of my son at the same crossroads, I know what I want for him... Thus, I am better equipt to answer it for myself. What I want for me is the same thing that I want for Colton. I want someone we can talk to for hours, someone who challenges us, and makes us want to be better people then we already are. Someone who inspires us, and we can look up too morally and righteously, and yet is our equal everyday of our lives. Someone who is intelligent and makes us think, and yet is fun to engage with, someone we can be silly and goofy around without threat of being thought less of. Someone who makes us chuckle, as well as belly laugh, and yet still brings a sense of peace into our lives, and our hearts, when we are around them. Someone we can share all of life's experiences, adventures, day trips, and mundane routine life with. I want us to have a best friend who cherishes us for the depth of character each of us have, not the shells we allow most to see. I want us to find someone worthy of our hearts. Someone that we would be willing to give up the world for, and yet having them never allows us to do so. I want someone who protects us from ourselves, and sees the aura of our potential and worth, and guides us there. Someone we do not have to walk in front of to bring them up, or that we have to walk behind to push along the journey. I want for us a partner in life who can walk beside us... hold our hands, and are as blessed to have us in their lives as we are to have them in our own.
And yet armed with all of this self introspective knowledge all I can say is "I am not ready for this"... How can I show him, when I have never seen it come to fruition myself? How do I convey that the quest for the ideal is truly obtainable. That settling is not an option. How do I teach a child with genes that came from my own stock that there is a process and that the right road is not always the easy road... especially when it comes to dating. Sometimes I feel like I can handle the job of parenting, and others, like now,... I just wish there was a manual. Or at least that I had a couple more years of experience behind me in order to properly address this issue. I need an easy button. If not for me, for Cole.
I love that kid, and I just want him to have so much more then I have... in love, in life, in self worth, in success, in education. I want his road to be easier then mine, one fought with less pit falls, and uneven ground. I want to give him the cliff notes version of love and dating, so that he can navigate the path better then I have. And yet, here I sit, as a helpless spectator looking into a fish bowl...Powerless. I guess this is where our journey begins to part. Where one learns to become the coveted friend, and one hopes and prays that the child knows the door is always open, and that they can come to you when they need you... and less the dictatorship parent, forcing ones hand to make things happen "Because I said so". Where guiding becomes an art, and the relationship becomes a dance. Where the choices he makes today are based on the values that I have instilled in him prior. I just hope, more then anything, that I have not let him down. I trust him to make better choices then I have... I just hope that he does.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Colton has a girlfriend...are you kidding me?
Colton, my Marine Corps dreaming baby boy... is dating. I am sooooooooooo not ready for this.
I mean who am I to guide this young man on this journey? I have yet to figure out the complexities of it. I do not know how to adequately steer him in the least bit. I am profoundly unqualified, and yet it is my god given job, duty, and right. How does one teach your child to protect themselves. Make concrete decisions for their lives and stick with them. How to not let the opposite sex steal your life goals, and inner most dreams, intentionally or not. And how does one convey that it can and does happen every single day.
I am fearful for him. Dating sucks, and he is too young to even realize that yet. I have a friend who repeatedly asks me "What does Dez want?" What do I want? This has been, in the past, hard for me to answer, but in the light of my son at the same crossroads, I know what I want for him... Thus, I am better equipt to answer it for myself. What I want for me is the same thing that I want for Colton. I want someone we can talk to for hours, someone who challenges us, and makes us want to be better people then we already are. Someone who inspires us, and we can look up too morally and righteously, and yet is our equal everyday of our lives. Someone who is intelligent and makes us think, and yet is fun to engage with, someone we can be silly and goofy around without threat of being thought less of. Someone who makes us chuckle, as well as belly laugh, and yet still brings a sense of peace into our lives, and our hearts, when we are around them. Someone we can share all of life's experiences, adventures, day trips, and mundane routine life with. I want us to have a best friend who cherishes us for the depth of character each of us have, not the shells we allow most to see. I want us to find someone worthy of our hearts. Someone that we would be willing to give up the world for, and yet having them never allows us to do so. I want someone who protects us from ourselves, and sees the aura of our potential and worth, and guides us there. Someone we do not have to walk in front of to bring them up, or that we have to walk behind to push along the journey. I want for us a partner in life who can walk beside us... hold our hands, and are as blessed to have us in their lives as we are to have them in our own.
And yet armed with all of this self introspective knowledge all I can say is "I am not ready for this"... How can I show him, when I have never seen it come to fruition myself? How do I convey that the quest for the ideal is truly obtainable. That settling is not an option. How do I teach a child with genes that came from my own stock that there is a process and that the right road is not always the easy road... especially when it comes to dating. Sometimes I feel like I can handle the job of parenting, and others, like now,... I just wish there was a manual. Or at least that I had a couple more years of experience behind me in order to properly address this issue. I need an easy button. If not for me, for Cole.
I love that kid, and I just want him to have so much more then I have... in love, in life, in self worth, in success, in education. I want his road to be easier then mine, one fought with less pit falls, and uneven ground. I want to give him the cliff notes version of love and dating, so that he can navigate the path better then I have. And yet, here I sit, as a helpless spectator looking into a fish bowl...Powerless. I guess this is where our journey begins to part. Where one learns to become the coveted friend, and one hopes and prays that the child knows the door is always open, and that they can come to you when they need you... and less the dictatorship parent, forcing ones hand to make things happen "Because I said so". Where guiding becomes an art, and the relationship becomes a dance. Where the choices he makes today are based on the values that I have instilled in him prior. I just hope, more then anything, that I have not let him down. I trust him to make better choices then I have... I just hope that he does.
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