My Son Is A Very Lucky Child

The morning news is always a depressing wake-up call. I was watching the 4-hour A.M. murder report while making Oliver pancakes this morning, thinking about my own young family as a list of violent teenage suspects scrolled down the television screen. Parents being interviewed, talking about their child's drug abuse, lack of academic interest, incarcerated fathers, it's easy to glance over at your own kid doodling on an iPad and think of all the scary stuff that might happen in the future.

Yet, when I really think about it, Oliver is pretty fortunate. If every parent's goal is to provide their children with a better life than they had, then my goal was met the second Ollie was born. I never met my father, my mother was an alcoholic and an "every narcotic under the sun" abuser. I lived in a teeny one bedroom apartment on a busy street in Chicago with my space-case mom and my secretly gang affiliated little brother. I grew up with a heavy fog of Christianity, (lutheran specifically) choking the life out of me, my mother ironically talking about Jesus in between vodka/coke binges.

I was old enough not to be tricked though, and cutting my family out of my life turned out to be way easier than I had thought. As soon as I moved away, I learned that "family is the most important" and the idea of "unconditional love" is the purest of bullshits. My mother and brother are my blood relatives, sure, but every loving relationship has a line in the sand. 

Oliver has a 3-story house with 12 rooms to explore and make messes in. He has access to electronics that would have made my 9 year old Giga-pet obsessed brain implode. Oliver lives in liberal atheist household, where nobody tells him that a space magician will punish him if he thinks about breasts. Most importantly, especially in 2014, I believe Oliver has the advantage of living with his mom and dad. It's scary, because I have no example of fatherhood from my own childhood to use as a reference point, and I certainly didn't experience any 2 parent households. However, the way I feel about Stephanie, my forever g/f and parental teammate, proves to me that blood doesn't really mean anything. It's the quality of time spent, the affection given and received, and the sacrifices that you make for each other that means something.

Could Oliver grow up to be a violent criminal? Sure, of course that's a possibility, he could make the wrong friends and develop a prescription addiction. Kids like that come from happy stable homes all the time. But every child is at risk for stuff like that, and without getting too egotistical about it, I really think that Oliver has a better chance than most, and for that, he's lucky.