This time last year I sent my oldest, Ryan, off on a bus downtown for his freshmen year of high school. If you recall it was a pretty treacherous journey as he missed his bus and I was having to guide him by text/phone calls to find the bus at another stop. Sitting in my pj’s on the couch ill equipped to navigate my first-born through the ‘real world’ of downtown was like driving blindfolded the wrong way down a highway.
You can re-visit this amusing post here. Ryan’s 1st Metro Bus Ride “Downtown Adventure”
Thankfully he got on the bus for his first day of his sophomore year and actually made it without blemish to school. However, the first text I receive at 6:43am is:
“First day, I forgot my tablet”
My response:
“Oh well.”
Yes…yes…quit clapping. Bravo Bravo! I know. 😉 I didn’t rush to drive down there and make sure he had his tablet. He has half a day and that’s it but it did take some effort to not want to ‘save’ him from any punishment. Then I walked into the kitchen and low and behold I see his backpack on the counter. This through me because I took him to the Metro bus stop and saw him get out of the car with a backpack.
How could this be? Neal comes in…ahhhh…and we check his backpack. Sure enough a Chemistry book, some English literature, etc. Ryan took Neal’s backpack to school. Not only does he not have his tablet but he has nothing that relates to school.
I’ll give it to him, though, he had to have realized this early on…not one text.
When do they ever start paying attention?? 😉
I know it’s an awful segue but it makes me think of my brother. A gifted man who sometimes doesn’t seem he’s always paying attention. 😉 I was purchasing a birthday gift for him this morning, one that I hope will boost his confidence and allow him to realize his worth in the gifts he’s been given, and a memory came to mind. A flashback if you will, but a good one.
My brother and I aren’t the closest. To no fault of either of ours…we don’t have a lot in common and being that he’s five years older than me and a self-professed ‘loaner’ I didn’t really see him much when we did live in the same house. But this one moment, when I turned 13, my brother gave me a birthday gift. Probably the only birthday gift I’ve ever received from him. And it was a cassette of a band I loved. I’d been asking for the cassette (yes, I’m dating myself here) and he heard me. I knew he didn’t have any money so I asked how he got it. “You don’t need to know. But I knew you wanted it.”
This was many moons ago and he was a teenager so I’m not trying to implicate him but in a strange way the fact that he possibly did something that could ‘get him in trouble’ and he did it to get me something I desired meant the world to me. Love was not easily passed between the two of us and this was his way of saying ‘I care. You matter.’
It was a good memory to have this morning. I know there are many times with my brother I have blown him off and thought ‘Oh well’…here we go again. I also know there are many times he’s crying out in his own way saying, “I’m here. I matter.”
I pray he knows he matters to me.
Blessings
Shannon
Here is a ‘Just Show Up’ Moment I recorded this week: