On Saturday, I met my son and his fiancé for lunch. Some of you don’t even know I have a son, but yes, I had a baby in 1987, when I was 23, and was on track to what I was taught. Find a man. ✔️ Get married and buy a house. ✔️ Start a family. ✔️
I did all the right things, but didn’t realize my drinking was a problem for another 10 years. My son was raised by an alcoholic Mother and it’s pretty much a miracle we survived. When I turned 34, I got sober and soon found out I was pregnant with my daughter. She was raised by a sober Mom, so they’re from different worlds, but have become close now that they’re adults.
Having lunch with my son was like stepping back in time to the Mother he knew, but not the woman I’ve become. When I left my marriage, he was a grown man with a good job near where we lived, so he stayed with his father, not realizing the toxic pool he would learn to swim in. His father blamed me for breaking up the family and still does a decade later, so my son and daughter endured a lot of manipulation.
The fiancé talked through lunch, but she was nervous, so I sat and listened. When it was time to leave I told my son I was going to the nearby garden center to look at a shipment of a flowering trees they just received to most likely take one home. He laughed and said, “Are you still killing plants?”
I pulled up some pictures on my phone and showed him some of the plants I’ve share with you dear Reader, but they didn’t register. As mentioned before, I’ve killed a lot of plants to learn how to care for them today, but that’s the last version of myself that my son knows. A decade of previous selves is the gap we’re in, but as we spend more time together, it would seem that my son needs to catch a glimpse of them all.
Feature Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash
Inbarbsworld 
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