Sam Has a Birthday This Weekend

I wrote about my son Sam when he moved to Oregon in early April. Sam is still out there, looking for work, living in a house with four other young adults, including his brother Ben. He turns 19 at the end of this month. This will be the first time ever that I have not spent at least a portion of his birthday with him, so this post is in lieu of baking Sam a birthday cake.

Sam has made for some great parenting moments over the years. There was the time when Sam was young - five, perhaps, maybe six - and he and Keegan, a year younger, decided it would be a good idea to throw rocks at Mrs. Roof's storm door. Mrs. Roof, who lived down the alley, was elderly and largely housebound. They tossed rocks until they broke the glass, then fled to their respective homes. I was not home when Mrs. Roof called to complain, but the story related by Sam's father was that when asked if he knew anything about Mrs. Roof's door, Sam denied any knowledge, then suddenly shouted, "I did it! I didn't know what I was doing! I'm crazy! I'm insane!"

Then there was the time that we took a lengthy car vacation from Ohio to California and back again, visiting a number of national parks along the way. The last stop, before barreling back to Ohio, was the Grand Canyon. Sam, who was eight that summer, marched up to the rim, looked at the spectacular vista spread out before him, then promptly turned around and sat down with his back to it. When I asked him why, Sam looked up - angry, homesick, on the verge of tears - and shouted "All you've done on this vacation is show me rocks!"

He refused to look at the Grand Canyon again.

There have been other moments as well: watching him tune his cello by harmonics when he was only six, because he could hear the tones so well, and then watching him put the cello down and refuse to play it ever again at age 11 rather than bend for the strings teacher who would not bend for him. There was the eighth grade science fair where he pulled off a Superior solely on the strength of his knowledge and ability to talk through the topic, having extrapolated data based on only one experiment. There was the one and only prom he attended, as the sophomore date of an older girlfriend, for which he groused and grumbled his way into a tux, posed for the mandatory pictures, then came home hours later exclaiming "That was a blast!"

My friend Katrina recently wrote me: "How is it that when you write, you make even problems with your kids sound poetic?"

How indeed? Probably because I exercise poetic license and exorcise the worst moments. There have been many; Sam and I have had more than our share of just plain awful scenes.

I am fortunate in that I was given a gift by Sam that changed the course of our relationship and kept it from unraveling entirely. Sam at sixteen was in court-ordered counseling; I participated in a family group independent of Sam. Sam's counselors decided he would benefit from a joint session. At it, one counselor asked Sam which parent he thought he was most like? Without missing a beat, Sam said "my mom." The counselor who had worked separately with both of us immediately said "I agree."

I had been sitting there expecting to hear "my dad," as every battle I struggled through with Sam reminded me of his father, who I had divorced after many long and difficult years together. Every time Sam and I crossed swords, I would see his father in him and my defenses would go up.

And here was Sam saying, so easily, "my mom."

Sam seeing what I couldn't - the similarities between us - made me take a long look at Sam, at me, and at our relationship. Life did not become idyllic, but our relationship changed permanently for the better. I started to see Sam for who he really was, rather than see in him motives and attitudes that belonged to someone else, and I learned to trust him and his emotions in ways I could not have before that moment.

We wouldn't have come as far as we have - either of us - without his revelation.

When Sam was a little boy, he once had a perfect day. Sam had kindergarten in the morning, and something exciting happened there - maybe an assembly or maybe just a great kindergarten day. Afterwards, his father took him to the grocery store when they were giving away lots of food samples, which Sam sampled liberally. Walking back to the car, Sam spied a penny on the pavement and scooped it up, exclaiming, "man, is this my lucky day or what?"

My birthday wish for my little boy all grown up is that he have a life full of lucky days - and that he never lose the ability to recognize them when they come along.