Not yet, a man, but quite a man…or so you would like to fantasize that you are capable of being a man.
Possibly, your youth and innocence was stripped from you, how ever so gradually, but so. On the other hand, maybe you were plummeted into assuming the role “man of the house” for your younger sisters.
Maybe you had to make sure your sisters ate, the dishes washed, and the trash emptied. You were in charge of seeing that your sisters had their baths, while you turned down the covers on their beds. After they brushed their teeth, you tucked them in and turned both night-lights on. In addition, you probably even read your sisters a bedtime story…and you did all of this before your 10th birthday.
I think after a while, I just took for granted that you were going to do it. Hell, part of me even felt like then was as good a time as any for you to practice being responsible, and learn how to be a man. I wanted you to understand that it was not easy raising you by myself and I wanted you to know what it meant to sacrifice.
Before I was able to get enough seniority at the post office to switch shifts, work mornings when you and your sisters were in school, instead of afternoons…I depended on you to make sure you and your sisters schoolwork was finished, the leftovers I took out of the freezer had thawed and you all ate.
I still wanted you to have fun, hang out with your friends after school, attempt to act as if you wanted to go to Bible study on Tuesday’s, and just be a kid. I guess I didn’t figure that you wouldn’t have time to do all of those things that a boy your age should be doing.
I always had a hard time trusting you and you sisters with a sitter, and besides that money could be put to better use, like for groceries, or a pair of Nikes, or whatever you or your sisters needed.
I never bargained on by the time you turned 13 that you really believed yourself to be a man. I never counted on you deciding that you were not going to be the “man of the house” anymore.
I didn’t understand why you stopped talking, and started falling asleep in class and disrespecting your teachers and me. I didn’t expect you to look at me the way you did when I told you that you couldn’t live in my home if you didn’t do what I told you to do.
So when I went into your room, and found out that you were gone, and that you had taken the picture of you, me and your sisters and tossed it in the corner…
Then I found a letter you had written on your 13th birthday, telling us all goodbye…I knew then that you were telling me, “Now I guess I got to be a Man.”
All I can do Son is say I’m sorry!!! Come home…
Dedicated to the Mothers who are Raising Sons & the Father’s that Didn’t Get the Chance…