Devonne Brown

Right this very minute I am most grateful for my freedom. It makes me glad I signed up to be a teacher. Summer makes the stress of the stupidity I put up with for seven and a half months a year worth it. 

I schedule important events on my summer calendar. If it doesn’t get a magnet on the fridge, it doesn’t matter. There are three things that are important to me stuck under magnets on the fridge: son’s graduation, a conference, and a delivery.

I just got a call from my son. He interrupted me and called because he felt guilty about his graduation schedule. He rescheduled it and messed up the conference, the delivery, as well as the whole month of June. 

The ability to make your kid feel guilty is a Mom Superpower that strikes without warning and hits hard when it does. His guilt is palpable and it feels good. Bless him. 

It wasn’t my intention to make my son feel guilty about his decision to go with a non-traditional graduation ceremony that involved date changes and a whole lot of people. I smile while he squirms. 

He called me on video chat; sometimes typed words are misconstrued. He was halfway through a sip of coffee when I answered the phone. “Did you find the mug I gave you? The blue one?” I asked. 

“Yes, I want to use this thermal one,” he said.

“You don’t like the blue one?” I asked. 

“Mom, now you’re trying to make me feel guilty because of graduation. Quit,” he was laughing, but he had an edge to his voice. 

He was right. I could have brought on the guilt about fishing, or cars, or just about anything, but I stopped. My work was temporarily done here. He didn’t like to think he had made me unhappy or hurt my feelings. I was still the most powerful person in his universe. In the summer, I had the power and the freedom to adjust my schedule to accommodate my boy on his graduation day and it was important to him.

For that, I was grateful right now. I could still make a wish come true.