Rule Number One is Come Home Safe
My brother-in-law asked if our oldest had been up to some mischief the night before, maybe messing around with his friends in the dark? He lives just down the hill and we’d run into each other at our small-town post office, on the first Saturday morning of April about eight years ago.
Both boys were teenagers then. Technically and legally, they weren’t yet my stepsons. But I already loved them as my kids.
My younger stepson, then 14, had hosted a few of his buddies for a sleepover the night before, the eve of the opening day of fishing season here in central Pennsylvania. By the time I was awake and at the post office, he and his friends were already at the creek with their fishing poles.
Once the kids arrived at our house, I hovered awhile to order pizza and offer sleeping bags.
But then I’d gone to bed.
The House Rule on Peanut Butter
Why? I asked my brother-in-law.
He’d found his truck handles covered in peanut butter that morning.
Back home, I reported to my husband. We hatched a plan.
When he was back from the creek, we asked our younger fisherman if he knew why we had both organic peanut butter and less-expensive, regular peanut butter.
The organic of course was for eating and the other for — well…?
His face cracked into a smile.
Busted.
Our intention was to send an important message: People are keeping an eye on you, especially in a small town. And we can laugh about a silly prank.
So we added to our rules list: If you’re using peanut butter for pranks, use the cheap stuff.
House Rule: Don’t Burn the House Down
For the record: I am not their mom. They have a mom and she loves them very much.
And they are my kids. All these things are true.
Their dad and I had fallen head-over-heels in love in our early 40s, so I loved these boys before I met them. (Read You Had Me at Pears.)
Then we got to know each other.
They were already teenagers, 15 and 13, well-behaved young men. They knew what their dad expected of them. They lived with their dad half the time and I moved into their house, also known as the “Man Cave.”
There was no guide-book for any of us. We all tiptoed around each other for a long time, and had to figure out how to become family together.
One day their dad and I left to take a walk and just naturally said something like: We’ll be back in an hour. Don’t burn the house down.
And I chimed in: And don’t hurt yourself — or your brother.
That was the beginning of the unwritten “rules list.”
Later, we added the bit about which peanut butter to use when you want to prank someone, preferably an understanding family member, or load mousetraps. Then, after ribbing about the big pocketbook I carry and the number of lost keys and sunglasses that had been found at the bottom, we added to the list: If you lose anything, look in Lisa’s pocketbook.
Your Heart Walking Around Outside Your Body
Somewhere in there, I became a parent. They were growing up so fast and the world is so big and dangerous.
I told a friend how scary it was to love someone this much, how nervous I felt for their safety every time they went out the door, especially as they started driving. My friend, not yet a parent, said she’d heard it described like your heart is walking around all day outside your body.
Exactly.
I mean, driving.
One school morning soon after my younger stepson started driving, a friend texted that a high school student had been life-flighted to a trauma hospital after a car wreck on the way to school. She didn’t know who it was, except not her son. Ours? I didn’t know.
Those unbearable minutes of not knowing, when it feels like my heart has shot up and frozen itself behind my ears and I can barely breathe. I was stirring supper on the stove when he arrived home that night, asked about the injured kid and mumbled something about trying hard not to throw my arms around him and never let him leave the house again.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked. We moved on.
My husband said later and many times since: They have to leave the house, hon. They grow up. That’s the deal.
My Rules, Your Rules, Our Rules
Did they need our list of rules?
Probably not, in retrospect. But I did. Our obvious and silly rules were my way to establish my role as someone new in their lives and home. A second adult and parental figure in their dad’s house with rule-making authority, who would not abuse it.
These kids already had a great base and, if anything, they just needed an occasional friendly, funny reminder of what was expected of them. My husband’s approach to parenting is to show them and trust them, not tell them. I had to learn on the fly. How will they know if we don’t talk about it?
As they reached new life-stages, our house rules became a vehicle for conversation and reminders.
I overheard a dad at a baseball game say to his son: Don’t do anything stupid, and you’re old enough by now to know what that means.
That went on the list with the not hurting anyone, or our home, the pocketbook and the peanut butter.
Watch Out for Stupid
The morning my older stepson left for college, I had about 25 different things I wanted to say to him.
I picked the most important one, and he seemed relieved. I told him he had a good head on his shoulders and made good decisions. All true. And sometimes it’s really easy to get caught up in the bad decisions of other people. Also true.
So — Watch out for the stupid things other people do. Onto the rules list.
With my older stepson at college and my younger a high school senior, I announced our rules list would officially become one simple, number one rule: Come home safe.
As they leave for ordinary and milestone events, like the prom, graduations and road trips I remind them: Rule #1, Come Home Safe.
By the Grace of God
Because kids are going to take risks.
We were all kids once who by the grace of God survived our youth. If some of us think back for too long, we might really scare ourselves.
I remember those times I found myself beyond my limits and somehow made it home safely. That night in Maine when I sped down the twisty-turny road to the beach with a bunch of friends after a party in my new pickup truck, with a friend standing up “surfing” in the truck bed. What seemed like a not-so-bad idea at the time easily could have turned tragic.
We all know those moments of poor judgment often lead to terrible, real, life-ending things. I do not know why some people survive those dangerous moments and others do not.
I don’t know why sometimes parents can do everything “right,” the best they can, everything they can think of and somehow the kids can’t make it home.
One Big Rule: Come Home Safe
Maybe our rules list had to get simpler because their lives were getting so much more complicated. If you find yourself in a bad situation, just focus on survival. Just get home.
If you ever get to a point where it all seems impossibly broken and you don’t know where to start: Come home safe. Everything else can be worked out.
If ever you are worried about being shamed or judged or yelled at … Don’t. Just get home. We will listen with love. No matter what, we will fall to our knees and be grateful you are alive.
Come home safe.
There is always time to make things right. You’ll figure it out (and we’ll be here.)
Keep Them Safe, Please
Sure, there were probably more peanut butter incidents and plenty of things I don’t know about. We’re not naïve. Our sweet little antique town, though full of beauty, family and love, baseball and cornfields, also holds plenty of danger and lots of pain.
Our oldest is married now, and with his wife building a home base of their own. (And, they can still come home if ever they need to.) Our youngest graduates college in less than two months.
Our boys became fine young men, navigating this pandemic we could barely imagine even as it unfolded. My worrying over the year has dulled into some tension held tight and deep in my body that won’t fully release until this is all “over” — whatever that exactly means or whenever that exactly happens.
Then, they will be off to the new adventures they’re supposed to be having as they launch their adult lives. Onto the delayed dreams and new plans.
I’ll always worry and pray for their safe passage. I lean into my faith that they are good humans, healthy, solid and well-prepared.
And occasionally — because I need to know that they know how much they are loved — I will remind each one of Rule #1. I know, he’ll say.
Then I can let go and move on with my day.
