Patience . . . patience . . . patience . . .

I’m sure that those of you who are parents would agree that other than LOVE, raising a child takes a lot of patience.  Patience with the child.  Patience with yourself.  And eventually, the child’s patience with you. . .

As I already mentioned, my son Elliot, my only child, is almost 25 years old.  And I STILL have not put together his baby book!  I always thought I’d ‘find time to do it later’.  I have a whole box of snippets of hair, his first pair of red (and very scuffed up!) saltwater sandals, scraps of paper with scribbles of momentous occasions like first word (it was ‘hot’ of all things!) and first step.  One of these days I’ll get it put together so I can give it to him.

Another ‘one of these days’ projects that kind of goes along with the baby book is that I have always wanted to put into writing my favorite stores about him.  A little book of all my favorite memories of him growing up.  And I’ve decided to get started on that here in my blog.  I know it’s not about primitives or art or trash to treasure projects, but being Elliot’s mom is a HUGE part of who I am.  Revisiting some of my favorite memories from his childhood is just something I need to do every so often.

Here is my favorite story about patience:

When Elliot was ten he met his Grandpa Louis for the first time.  Grandpa wanted to buy Elliot a computer, and so he did.  I seldom had time to use that computer, and when I did use it it was just to type up letters to friends using the Word processor.

A few years went by and we took the plunge to getting internet connection.  And I ventured onto the WWW.  I started my first web site (with much trepidation!)  And I locked up the computer a LOT!  So much so that I wouldn’t even use the computer unless Elliot was home to ‘fix whatever I messed up’!  Eventually I learned that it was no big deal to just shut down and restart the computer and my comfort level grew, with occasional lessons from my now teen-aged son.

Then it came time to learn to ‘cut and paste’.  I didn’t need to do it very often and I always forgot from one time to the next how to do it and was always calling out to Elliot for help.  In his annoyance at being interrupted from whatever else he was doing, he would usually just come and do it for me.  Which only confused me more!  I needed to learn to do this myself, so finally one day I asked him to talk me through it,  (I know!  Not that much to be talked through. . . )  But I wanted him to go over it several times in a row so that I would ‘have it down’, and not need to ask him to help me again.

He sighed impatiently, arms crossed, tapping his feet as if he couldn’t wait to get away from there.  “Mom!  Really, it’s not that hard!”  I looked up at him and smiled and said, “Excuuuuuuuse me, but do you know how long it took me to teach YOU to wipe your own BUTT?!?!?!”  He sighed and walked away.

But he was much more patient with me and my computer lessons from then on!