Parenting

I’m Facebook friend’s with Chad’s second grade teacher. She still talks about how sweet he was when he was in the second grade. He was such a nice kid and then, he turned 13. I remember the day he got off the bus . . back before he was no longer allowed to ride the bus! I stood at the door after he walked in and made a smart comment wondering . . where’s my boy. I don’t like this one so much!

We went through years of him being a wild child. High school was pretty bad. College wasn’t terrible because, mostly because I probably knew very little of what went on.

Last night on Facebook, a reader reminded me of Chad’s tires. I don’t know what it was about tires but we were constantly buying tires for him. He’d do crazy stuff and the warranty never seemed to cover them. One day, he left the house to go to the bank, which wasn’t far from home. He called Vince and said “I have a flat.” Vince went to help him, thinking he probably had a nail in a tire. Vince got there and there was a hole in the tire . . big enough to put your fist through it. Vince said “What the heck did you hit?” No idea . . or that was his story.

Once I was driving to Louisiana. Chad called. He was at the tire shop and he needed new tires. I said “Chad! I just bought those tires.” He said “MOM! I’ve had these for SIX MONTHS!” I explained that most people keep tires for six years. He said “WHAT??”

Yesterday I was talking to him. We were talking about the riots. I said “I don’t understand why they even set a curfew if they don’t enforce it. Did these people never raise teenagers?” He laughed and said “You really didn’t have it so bad!” I now know that I didn’t but when I was going through it, I thought I’d lose my mind.

But, what got me started on this subject, Chad loves baking bread.

He’s been making bread but I asked him if he wanted sourdough starter and he said “No. He didn’t really have time to mess with sourdough.” That was a month or so ago. Saturday morning, he sent me the above picture of two loaves of sourdough bread he had made.

Then he sent me this! I’m going to have to brush up on my breadmaking skills. He’s leaving me behind!

A friend there in town gave him a starter. Nicole said the guy was looking for a small piece of some kind of wood. Chad had it, gave it to him so the guy brought Chad some starter when he came to pick up his wood.

Then he sent me a photo of all his starters.

I don’t know if any of you have kids or grandkids giving you heck right now but there’s hope. Fifteen years ago, I would never ever have guessed Chad would be a great dad, a decent husband (Nicole works her butt off and Chad keeps coming up with ideas of things she needs to do!), and be making all kinds of bread.

His final picture was of all his bread for the day.

He had a fun day of making bread and making his mom happy!