Gentle Giants

My oldest son, who we call Chewie, was a tornado standing on his head when he was two. There was nothing to him. He was small for his age and all bone and skin and full of energy.

He was the oldest in many ways. We relied on him to be responsible (even though there were times when he clearly was not). We trusted in him to grow up before his time, simply because we were dealing with something that most people did not have the capacity or patience to cope with.

Sometimes we expected more of him than he should have been able to give us. We blundered through bouts of being uninsured and hoping that things would either heal on their own or that you would get better and be stronger for it. However, if your life had been in danger at any time, Chewie, money would have been no object and we would have gotten you the help you needed even if we had to sell things to get you treatment.

(And you wonder why I am the way I am about health care issues).

There were also times when I wish I could have been more his mom than this woman trying to get this "other child" diagnosed or looked at him for the age he was instead of the age I needed him to be.

I wish I had been more aware of what he needed. But there were so many times when we had to focus elsewhere.

I remember a particularly frightening experience he had when he ran to me crying at age nine and buried himself in shirt with his arms wrapped tightly around me. And suddenly instead of the preteen I was thinking he was, I realized he was still just a little boy.

However, he is twenty-three now. And he is finally a responsible adult. He is kind and gentle and a good man. And I am proud of him for it. For all my stumbling, bumbling, inept parenting I think he turned out well.

However he is no longer a tiny boy, all skin and bone but a strapping young man who is taller than his father and broader by far.

He is a gentle giant.

His teacher told me one time that he could get through life simply on charm alone.

I believe that is true to a certain extent. He has more charm than the law should allow and a smile that could out shine the sun. I tell people that Chewie is "sparkle and shine" because he is….Always, sparkle and shine.

I apologize for the times it seemed like we either were ignoring you or forgetting you, because we never did it on purpose. Possibly it was because he never complained that he needed anything except computer parts. The occasional pair of shoes or some new jeans- maybe it's because you were just such a good kid as a teen that we never had to worry about you and in turn relied on you to be every bit the adult you were.

He never went out drinking till he was twenty one…Never felt the need to, and didn't do drugs…Computer gaming was his drug and could have been his downfall. But for us there was some tough love involved and that was harder us more than you will ever possibly imagine.

However, not every kid gets to drive a 67' Camaro to school and not every kid has a mom that rebuilt computers and allowed the occasional role playing game taking place on the table in her dining room. Not every mom would allow LAN parties in her basement, a girlfriend sleeping on the couch in her living room, or subs in the back of her Buick. Not every mom would give a child the day off from school simply because it was their birthday, get excited at X-Men movies, plan Star Wars parties to go to the cinema with costumed friends, go to zombie movies or to bat for someone because their principle didn't understand the workings of the schools server or the complexities and rules involved in giving rights to people with Novell.

Not very many mothers could tell him (when she called because her son was disciplined after he deleted his teachers files off the server) that this was because Novell was not set up so the students could not delete the files. And why weren't they set up with rights to only certain files and the inability to delete files but the ability to save copies of files to the desktop?

Okay, now I'm being a computer tech.

We fed you and dressed you, loved you and disciplined you in the best way we knew how at the time and we didn't even have a technical manual and I believe we did a pretty good job. I hope we did.

We appreciate your patience Chewie, while we blundered through this part of your life. You were the proto-type. You were asked to burden a lot of responsibility and we appreciated the help. We still ask you to shoulder the responsibility but now we ask you to do it for your own life and those you choose to accompany you. We ask you to take care of your brother and sister and as you have always but now as an adult. You're not responsible for them, but we would ask that you always be there for them. And we ask forgiveness for our short comings and appreciation for our achievements.

As I always have stated. We did the best we could with what little we had.

We love you Chewie, we always have and always will.

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