Two Broads and Baluba

Empty (I Wish) Nest

For blogging purposes,  my daughter will be Samantha, (Sam for short) and my son will be Wes.  
Those were their chosen names before birth; the ones every parent gives the growing human being inside of them, for the sake of answering curious friend’s questions, like “What names have you chosen?”  However, this name plan didn’t work.  When they were born, they  looked at me and told me their real names.  Babies have a tendency to do that.  You get all hyped up to name them a certain thing, then they come out all wrinkled, gooey and  screaming, and look at you with heavily lidded eyes and tell you what you should name them.  My daughter did NOT look like a Samantha, so she was named something else before we left the hospital.  My son looked in my eyes and told me his name was Rodney.  I was like…  “Oh HELL no!”  So I named him something that was kind of Rodney-Wes ish.  He and I have been uncomfortably compromising ever since.  

In mild digression, this is one of the reasons I cringe at the popular trending names.  Let the kid name itself for goodness sakes, then you won’t have seventeen Kaidens (catch all name for boys AND girls) turn their heads at roll call.

Wes and Samantha are now adults. I had my children relatively late in life, by the eighties standards, and ended up having my daughter in my early thirties.  My daughter is off to college, but still close enough to see occasionally, and my son (the oldest) is still at home, living with his girlfriend, and still deciding what he wants to do  with his life.  

Maybe I should have given in when he was a young boy, riddled with ADD and unable to concentrate in school.  Maybe I should have drugged him to a semi-catatonic state so he could have absorbed more.  But I have no regrets weaning him off of his kiddy cocaine.   

He was on it for a brief moment in time, less than a year, I believe.  When he was on it, he was Mister Marvelous,  he could sit without getting up and twirling around, and write more than three lines of a sentence before scratching intricate designs on his writing implements with whatever he could find. He would also stare off into space, and lost his “Wesness.”   I hated the way he behaved when he was “coming down” off the drugs, which usually occurred right around dinner/homework/calm down time.

I hated the way he was turning into a string bean of a child, and I hated the very fact I had to resort to drugging my kid.  It made me feel horrible, like a failure.

It is my belief that some children are born learners and rule followers, and some are born for a different purpose; and will find their place in this dichotomy when it is their natural time arrives.

My son is such a person.  He writes brilliant poetry and essays, yet he hates to write.  He failed a majority of his classes in high school and barely scraped by in others, yet he got high grades in Advanced Placement Calculus.  He has a wonderful, rich baritone voice, yet I have never heard him sing.  He wants to go to college too.  He wants to do tech support.  There’s a lot he can do, and wants to do, but he needs to have the drive to give himself a better life.

I hope he succeeds.   I hope he’s like a ticking time bomb of intelligence and fortitude; and will surprise us all, making a successful something of himself.   Watch him end up making more money than my daughter, who is attending a university to be a veterinarian.