Parental Pride [Me]

When I was a young mother, I lived with my best friend, my almost-sister. She had a son only a few months younger than my daughter. So for all intents and purposes, the two of us were parents to the two toddlers. They were raised as brother and sister. As they got older, even when we no longer lived together, I continued to claim the boy as my own. He is now 21 years old, living with several other people his age while going to college. I'm terribly proud of him. Especially when I receive a random text from him like this:

hey thanks for showing me how clean things are supposed to be, and how money is to be used, and trying to put math into my mathless brain, and feeding me

I'm very proud of that boy.

We were going through the town where he lives recently, and stayed with him for the night. When we got there, he was all frustrated because he hadn't been able to arrange the house to his frustration. They had only recently moved in, and his roommates didn't see arranging the furniture as the priority that he did. So he was a bit apologetic when we got there. "But the bathroom," he said, "the bathroom looks good." When he was a middle-school-aged child, cleaning the bathroom had been his job. He wiped down the mirror and the sink, and cleaned the toilet, and I gave him a dollar or two for it. And he always did a very thoughtful job, trying as hard as he could. So I checked out the bathroom. And it was clean. It was well-decorated and neat and supplied.

The boy had done good. Which means I had, as well.