Before he left home, son Anthony spent a peck of time at the home of one of his friends. I didn't know that friend's family, and I wondered when a bill for his room and board would arrive.A decade later, I've finally met that mother. By a happy lack of planning, she sat beside in church one day.
She surprised me by asking how Anthony was. She explained how she knew him, we chatted about those days, and she told me this:
When Anthony decided to sell his car, she bought it. She paid a hundred dollars for the old Honda Civic, and both her sons drove it for years. "It was a really good little car," she said. "I never had to do anything with it."
But one day her youngest son returned home with news. The Honda had broken down beside the highway. He'd left it there, and hitched a ride home. "We should send out a tow truck," said his mother.
"It'll be fine," he told her. "I'll go back and get it tomorrow."
But next morning the RCMP called. They'd traced her through the car's licence plate, they explained. During the night thugs had vandalized the forsaken vehicle, then set it ablaze. Anthony's old Civic had rolled its last mile.
The insurance company wrote the car off. "We can't give you more than $500 for it," the agent apologized.
She grinned, telling me. "That little car was good while I had it, but it was worth even more ruined!"
I laughed along with her - and laughed even harder when she told me about the day she'd bought the aging hatchback. "It was covered in stickers," she said. I remembered those. The car's steel blue body barely showed through. Skulls and crossbones, rock band logos, and bumper stickers - our darlin' boy had decorated his chariot well. Whenever I protested, a new sticker appeared. I learned to bite my tongue.
My companion said she wasn't stuck on the stickers either. When Anthony delivered the car, she'd looked it over. "Well," she'd said, "I guess I could take the stickers off."
"Oh, don't do that, Mrs. M." he'd shot back, alarmed. "I think they're sort of holding the car together!"
She left them on.
We shared a moment of laughter. Of wondrous gratitude that we'd all survived those raisin' years. But when I thanked her for the free board and room, she tossed it off. "I always loved it when my boys had their friends over. At least I knew where they were."
I'd love to report that I was that charitable in those days. Instead, I spent less time trying to know my son's friends than I did fomenting about their - and his - choices of clothes, music, and activities.
Stickers all. Everyone uses them, and often we're positive they hold us together. But unlike me, our Heavenly Father looks past those, to the truly important stuff, and invites us home.Father, make me more like you.
