Last week was a tough week in our house. I think we’ve been kind of spoiled with the
generally mature behavior of Shelby and Ashlyn as the years have gone by, so
when they do something monumentally stupid (which most teenagers tend to do on
a fairly regular basis) it comes as quite a shock to their mother and me. We often remind ourselves, as we did again
last week, just how lucky we are that they aren’t out drinking and doing drugs
like a lot of kids. They aren’t at wild
parties every weekend or chasing every guy they see. They don’t dress like they plan to be on a
street corner looking for business. They
seem to genuinely care about others.
They are good kids. Seriously.
But, sometimes…
Shelby is almost twenty-two and will be moving into an
apartment very soon, so it’s understandable that she would be stretching her
wings of independence to see how far they spread. She forgets, however, that she still lives
in my home and the walls there don’t allow for a lot of stretching and
certainly no flying. Ashlyn, who at 18
wants to be considered an adult when it comes to doing what she wants, but can
brilliantly play the “I’m still a little kid” card when it benefits her. They may be considered "Adults" by some standards , but only
if they are graded on a curve.
Although we might have an occasional test of our parental
authority from Shelby or Ashlyn (and multiple ones from Taylor), last week they
hit us with a series of surprise attacks in a very short period of time. Staged one after the other with little chance
to rest or recover in between, Connie and I were left battle weary and ready to
place our finger on the big red button of doom:
the nuclear option of taking car keys and keeping them under house
arrest.
Before I explain what happened, let me say that I understand
that in comparison to what a lot of parents deal with, their infractions were
relatively minor. I completely get
that. I also don’t care. We play by the rules set in our house, not in
someone else’s. As parents our rules
are tougher than some, more lenient that others. All that matters are that our rules and
expectations are clear.
Our week of discontent started on Sunday night, when Shelby
and Ashlyn changed their initial plans of coming to our house with some friends
to watch a movie into going with a friend to his grandmother’s house to watch a
movie there. This, of course, did not
make Taylor happy, since she was included (by nature of living there) in the
first plans, but excluded from the second.
It doesn’t matter how often it
happens (and it happens a lot), I never get used to the emotional drama of
teenage girls.
Before they left, Connie and I clearly told Shelby and
Ashlyn that they needed to leave for home at 10:30pm. Our reasons were sound:
·
Shelby had to work the next day
·
they were in someone else’s home and should not
stay late
·
that gave them plenty of time to watch a movie
·
because we said so
They had not been gone 30 minutes when Ashlyn called to say
that they were going to get pizza with their friend and his grandmother, so
they might need some extra time to watch the movie. It was a reasonable request, and being
reasonable people, we agreed. After some
negotiating, we added an hour to the time they needed to leave. Don’t say we aren’t fair minded.
We told them to text when they were leaving.
At midnight we texted Ashlyn, since we had not heard from
them. She responded quickly, saying
that the movie was almost over and they would leave as soon as it ended. I asked “how long?” and she replied “fifteen
minutes.”
Forty-five minutes later we texted them back and asked where
they were. The response was, “we’re
talking and getting ready to leave.”
Apparently not.
For once, it was Connie who got up to wait for them and give
them the glare of shame as they walked through the door. It’s usually me that plays bad cop, but I
think she was afraid I would say something I would regret since I’d been in a
grumpy mood for a few days anyway.
Unfortunately for the girls, and something none of us really knew,
Connie’s “bad cop” mode apparently goes into overdrive once it gets past 2am,
so when the girls finally walked in at 2:15, she was not her typical happy
self.
Leaving the parenting in her capable hands, I was sleeping
peacefully in my cozy bed, but she told me the next morning that she gave them
a pretty strong lecture on responsibility and doing what you say you’re going
to do. There were feeble attempts at
explanation from them and threats of future consequences from her. In all, not a lot was accomplished, but
everyone went to bed appropriately disgruntled.
Monday night I arrived home from work to learn Shelby and
Ashlyn had been invited to spend that night at the home of a young lady from
church, along with a couple of other
girls. Not a big deal except that...again, Taylor was not invited. The
drama is never ending. I don’t blame
Taylor for being upset, and I don’t blame Ashlyn and Shelby for wanting to hang
out with friends without their little sister tagging along. It’s a vicious Catch-22. If one is happy the other can’t be. Either way, Connie and I are left in the
middle and that means that almost always, we aren’t happy.
Since this was a sleepover, we didn’t have to worry about
them overstaying their welcome or driving home late at night. Connie and I slept well with the knowledge
that they were safe.
A little after 5am, Connie got a text. “Are you seeing the stars?” It was Ashlyn, who can get as excited about
a cute kitten or a prancing deer or a particularly brilliant cluster of stars
as anyone in the world. Rather than
running outside to look at the wonders of the pre-dawn sky, Connie and I both
were in awe of the fact that they were obviously still awake.
As we left for work that morning, we texted them to remind
Shelby that she had to be at a staff meeting at 10am. We also felt it was necessary to remind her
that she should come home, shower and look somewhat appropriate for work. Why
we did this, I do not know. It’s been a
long time since I’ve stayed up all night long and then had to function for work
or school the next day. If I stay up
much past midnight now, I’m a fuzzy brained drooler most of the next day. I need a mass consumption of coffee to
function as it is.
Shelby was fine and made it home in time to clean up and
dress nice for work. I shouldn’t have
doubted, but sometimes as a parent you see patterns of behavior where there
isn’t one.
But sometimes, there is…
That afternoon I was at work when Shelby called to say that
she was going to drive 30 miles over to Maryville to see her soon-to-be
roommate Lindsey so they could discuss all the stuff soon-to-be roommates need
to discuss. I told her that there were severe
thunderstorms rolling in and the radio was predicting high winds. She said that Lindsey told her it was clear
in Maryville, which in Shelby’s mind meant no harm could possibly come to her. Rather than argue, I simply said, “you’re
going to do what you want, so I won’t waste time trying to talk you out of
it. Be careful…love you.” I would like to say that I was practicing
reverse psychology, but it was really just resignation to the knowledge that I
could not win the battle.
I hung up the phone and for the next five minutes I thought
about her driving to Maryville and back that night. As I’ve said before, I am the worst case of
all worst case scenario thinkers. I
generally stop just before the involvement of marauding zombies or rampaging dinosaurs, but
pretty much every other conceivable bad thing that could happen crosses my mind
when it comes to the safety of my kids.
I picked up the phone and called her back.
“Hello?”
“Hey Shelby,” I said.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m coming through Oak Ridge on the way to Lindsey’s.”
“Okay…I’ve changed my mind.
You can’t go to
Maryville. Turn around and go home.”
She thought I was joking.
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“But we had planned to meet today for almost a week.”
“You should have thought of that before you stayed up all
night last night and most of the night before.”
I let that sink in and then gave her my justification. “You are tired, and you will likely be
driving in a storm in heavy traffic. I
have no idea what time you will come home tonight, and after the last two
nights I don’t expect you’ll choose to come home early. Finally, you are driving a car in my name
and under my insurance. If you are
tired and have an accident you could not only hurt of kill someone, which would
be horrible and something you’d have to
live with if you survive, but you’d also destroy us financially, since I
would have a share of the responsibility.”
It was one of my more well organized and logical rants and
one which she obviously had no reasonable response to. There was silence for a moment and then a
very frustrated “Fine, I’m going home.”
The line went dead and I immediately began to dread what I
would face when I got home. Would I get
the silent treatment from Shelby? A
lecture from Connie that I had gone too far?
I expected the worse, but instead got “absolutely normal” Shelby; calm
and excited to show me some crafts she was doing for display in her new
apartment. Any resentment she felt
toward me she hid well…or else she knew that she would soon be escaping the
warden’s prison and there was no point stirring things up now.
Later, I finally asked her if she was upset and she said she
had been disappointed but understood why I had done it. This was the mature Shelby I was used to
dealing with.
Tuesday night, Ashlyn went to dinner with a lady from our
previous church who has been a dear friend and Christian mentor to Ashlyn for
several years. Due to scheduling
issues, they had not been able to meet for quite a while, so Ashlyn was excited
to get together and catch-up on all that had been going on in their lives. I have always been grateful to this woman
for taking the time to meet with Ashlyn and listen to her problems and
encourage her. She’s young enough to be
fun and cool to Ashlyn, but she’s also a wife and mother of two, so she’s a
great mature role model as well.
The plan was to meet across town at 6pm and as she was
leaving Ashlyn said, “Can we all watch White Collar at 9pm?” White Collar is one of the rare shows that
we can all watch together. I watch it
because of the witty scripts and characterizations. The four ladies of the house watch it to get
lost in the eyes and smile of actor Matt Bomer.
When 9pm came and Ashlyn was not home, my first spark of
worry arose, but it was minimal. I knew
they had a lot to talk about and that the restaurant didn’t close until 9, so I
let it go. Twenty minutes later I made
the first call to her cell-phone and got only voicemail, and this continued for
the dozen or so calls I made across the next forty-five minutes.
I asked Shelby if she had heard from her and unbeknownst to
me she began texting Ashlyn’s friends to see if they knew anything of her
whereabouts. At 10pm Connie and I were
trying to find the cell number of Ashlyn’s mentor, which we somehow didn’t
have. I hated to call her home, because
she had two small kids who might be asleep, but we were very close to doing
that. Finally Shelby came upstairs
saying that Ashlyn had called and was on the way home.
Connie reminded me not to be mad when she came in, but I
wasn’t. I was mainly just relieved. She came in smiling her Ashlyn smile and
said, “Sorry, I didn’t know my phone was on silent.” I wanted to say that if she wasn’t in
school, church or a movie, there was no reason for it to be on silent, but I
didn’t. She apologized again for being
late, and said that they talked until the restaurant closed and then sat in the
parking lot talking some more. She had
no idea that we were all so worried.
Kids never do.
We gave her a brief reminder to just keep us informed about
what was going on, and she tried to deflect our concern by saying she was
perfectly safe. What kids don’t get is
that while they may be perfectly safe where ever they are, if we don’t know
that, then we are envisioning them stopping for gas and getting carjacked, or
running off the road into a tree-lined ditch, or any number of horrible things
that happen randomly.
I told her something I had told Shelby that afternoon when
we talked about her driving to Maryville.
“No one ever plans to have an accident, but you CAN plan for ways that
might keep accidents from happening.”
(You might have to read that a few times for it to make sense, but trust
me, there’s a slight bit of genius in that logic).
Wednesday night was uneventful, and I was grateful. I was getting too old for this.
Thursday morning Taylor and I drove to Kentucky to spend
time with my parents and left Connie with the two troublemakers. I thought that after the issues of the last
few days that it would be fairly calm and uneventful for my sweet wife. That night I called her just before 10pm to
check in and say goodnight and I could tell from the noise in the background
that something was going on.
“The girls and some friends are going to the midnight
showing of The Dark Knight Rises,” Connie told me. This did not cause me to worry. I don’t begrudge them being young and doing
fun things. The theater is less than 10
minutes from our house, so it wasn’t a big deal. There would be lots of people since it was
opening night, so I knew they would be safe.
I was actually a little jealous that they were getting to go and I
wasn’t.
The next morning Connie called me a little before eight and
asked if I had been watching the news. I
told her that we had not turned on the television that morning and she told me
about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado.
My heart shook at the thought of my girls sitting in a dark theater at
the exact same time, watching the exact same movie.
I asked if they were okay this morning and she said they
were still asleep and didn’t know about what happened, but something in her
voice let me know there was something else wrong too. After some prodding, she finally told me
that she had told them when they left to come home immediately after the
film. That should have been some time
just after 3am, since it was a nearly three hour movie. She had told them to text her when they left
the theater so she would know they were on the way. She woke up at 4:30 and realized that she
had not received a text. She got up and
found the light in the living room still on.
Hoping that they had just forgotten to text or turn out the lights, she
looked outside and the car was still not in the drive.
Kids cannot comprehend the sudden panic that takes over a
parent when their child is not where they are supposed to be when they are
supposed to be there. It’s a full body
experience that can wake you completely from a groggy slumber until every nerve
in your body is screaming.
I never understood or even considered this feeling when I
was growing up, and when I was in college and still living at home, I was just
as thoughtless and unaware of my parent’s feelings. I think back now to the nights that I was
out late and did not call (even though we didn’t have cell phones back then, it’s
not a great excuse for worrying the people who love you most in the world).
While in college I began working on the tech crews with the
local community theater. I loved the
creative, open-minded atmosphere, and the people were amazingly fun and sweet. After almost every performance there was a cast
and crew party and there were a few nights I didn’t come in until dawn.
Did I do anything wrong at these parties? No (whether you believe me or not), I did
not. I have always been a bit strange
about not bowing to peer pressure, so despite what might have been going on
around me, I was either too clueless or simply didn’t care to be involved. I didn’t drink or do drugs. I mainly sat around and talked and enjoyed
the energy of the people. I never did
anything at those parties that I look back on now and say I am ashamed
of…except…now I wonder if my parents ever lost sleep or had that terrible
parental fear that I get now. If I did
that to them, then I am deeply and sincerely sorry.
Connie called and got Ashlyn on the phone, who explained
that they were hungry after the movie and were now at IHop with a lot of other
moviegoers, waiting on food. She
apologized and said that she had reminded Shelby that they were supposed to go
home immediately, but was overruled by the power of pancakes. Connie was not happy.
The shootings put things back in perspective somewhat, but
we were still not happy with the choices the girls were making. Like I said, they weren’t necessarily doing
anything wrong except not honoring what they had told us they would do, which
in hindsight is not a very big deal, but also a VERY big deal.
We have told the girls many times through the years, and
I’ll bet others have heard a variation of it as well, “it’s easy to lose trust
and very difficult to gain it back.”
I talked to Shelby over the weekend and asked what she had
been thinking throughout the week. She
said she didn’t know and that she felt like she wasn’t doing anything right
anymore. She said that sometimes it felt
like twenty-some years of being responsible was too much and she was pushing
back. I told her that I understood and
that sometimes we get in a pattern of making bad choices and that it’s almost
like our mind gets temporarily rewired that way. I’ve been at points in my life where I
thought every decision I was making was wrong.
The only way out is to recognize it and start asking for help. Prayer is always the first place to go.
I told her to err on the side of too much information when
it comes to her Mom and me. If we know
where they are and that they are safe, we’re much less likely to be upset. Not knowing is such a horrible feeling to a
parent.
If you think I am too hard on my kids, you may be right, but
it’s only because I love them so much and want to protect them. I know that they will do stupid things,
because all kids do stupid things and because I did an amazing amount of stupid
things (and still do more than my fair share). I don’t want them to repeat my
mistakes. I was lucky to survive some
of them.
When I was just out of high school and stretching my wings a
bit too, my friend Rodney and I went to Louisville one afternoon to see a
movie. As we pulled into the parking
space at the theater in Rodney’s old yellow Ford, we slammed particularly hard
into the concrete parking barrier. I
looked at Rodney and he said, “My foot went all the way to the floor, man. The brakes are gone.”
Now, any logical people would have called someone, maybe a
wrecker or AAA or their parents, but not us.
We went inside and watched our movie and came back out and got in that
same yellow Ford. I’m not sure how we
didn’t catch a light on Bardstown Road.
I don’t know how we got onto Watterson Expressway or exited onto
Interstate 64. It made sense at the
time that we could do it, just as drunk drivers are positive that they can
drive safely or people who text think they can do that while paying attention
to the road. I can’t speak for Rodney,
but I admit to being a little nervous, yet I didn’t offer up a single
suggestion that it was a terrible idea or that we should not be doing it.
Amazingly, we made it the thirty miles back to our exit and
even somehow maneuvered that big curve on the ramp taking us back into
town. It was less than a half mile from
Rodney’s house that a car pulled out in front of us and with no brakes he had
no choice but the swerve wildly and take us off the road and head first
straight down a steep embankment. We
came to sudden stop that was so jarring I can still feel it in my teeth some
nights.
We were watched over that day because we not only survived
without a scratch, but more fortunately, we did not kill anyone else. Even if I was to combine all the stupid
things my girls have done so far, it wouldn’t come close to how stupid that one
incident was. I understand “stupid”
all too well.
I hope my kids make smarter choices than I did. I hope they understand that sometimes even
the littlest decisions can have a huge, life-altering impact. Unfortunately, there are no time machines to
correct our mistakes. All we can do is hope and pray that we live
through them so we can ask forgiveness and learn not to do them again.
