Sometimes parents have regrets,
We have regrets because we did not do right by our children,
We had you young, maybe when we shouldn’t have.
You came into a world this tiny little bundle of tears and limbs,
You had needs that I didn’t understand and couldn’t always provide when I figured it out.
I was a child too, and even if some of us weren’t, we needed to grow and become and learn and change.
I didn’t make decisions that concerned you the way I should have, decisions that quite literally have affected you throughout your entire life.
I know that I didn’t tell you how beautiful you were or how smart you always were or how artistic you were when you drew that picture of an angel sitting on a park bench.
I knew I had a mouth to feed. Yours, not mine. I didn’t have any money most of the time, I didn’t care if I ate, but you… I did my best to try to make sure you had something to eat. It is the most painful thing for me to admit that there are more times than I can accept that you cried yourself to sleep, hungry. Despite the fact that I knew I was trying my best to feed you, I will never be able to forgive myself that there were those times that I was unable to.
Then you began to grow, with me always having that sense of self-doubt that I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was doing because I was never taught it. I grew up the way that I was raising you, though, at the time, I didn’t know it. I didn’t want to stop to think about it.
Can I do anything to change what’s happened? Can I go back in time and change circumstance?
No, I can’t.
And if you wanted me to, I did not raise you the way I had hoped. I need for you to be someone who, in retrospect, can look back on our life and see it for what it truly was. I have wanted to close this book, not just move on to the next chapter, but CLOSE this book. To shut out all of the pain, the insecurity and the disdain.
We can write a new book. You and I; both of our names on the cover, embellished in gold leaf. The pages are blank and I want to start new. We are better than what our past is allowing us to be. We can strive to be more, to do more, to love more, to forgive more.
Parent and child. I’m unsure which one I am. You and I are hope… the physical presence of hope. Let us not disappoint the readers.