Child for Sale

A twenty-five dollar gift certificate, a $2.95 card that reads, “Welcome to the family,” and a 47-cent stamp can undo a year of misunderstanding. Total expenditure: $29.42. Not a bad price to pay for an adult child if you think about it. I know folks who routinely pay $29.42 for bad Chinese take-out food. Bad Chinese food is less likely to give you grandchildren never mind look at old family photographs with you. And you never hear bad Chinese take-out food tell the story about how we got lost on that hike during the thunderstorm.

Fast forward 20 years and not even a $50 gift certificate and a card that reads, “I wish I had sent you this note welcoming you to the family two decades ago” will bring back the lost years. And I don’t even want to think about how expensive a stamp might be in 2027. You could spend a suitcase full of dollars, but the adult child will be off the market.

I know your son has done more than his share to damage the relationship. Yes, he flunked all his courses at the community college and lied about it. Yes, he dyed his hair purple and moved in with a man rather than a woman. Yes, he married outside the faith. I understand that you find these actions unconscionable and unforgivable.

But let’s fact it: you haven’t exactly been blameless either. When he called to enthusiastically share news of a new job you said, “But you have no experience in that field; that will never work” rather than “Good for you, you’re going to be great.”

Whatever you think about his being gay, whatever your opinion about his marrying someone of another faith, whatever your belief about purple hair, he’s still your son. Whereas you can always try a different Chinese place, you only get a certain number of children.

There are always a dozen reasons to end a relationship: a $25,000,000 business deal, a $25 lunch check; a perceived insult, a real insult; a large difference of opinion, a small disagreement. There’s only one reason to stay the course and maintain a relationship with your difficult progeny: that having a connection to your kid-even a problematic one-is better than not.

And it could be that no matter how thin you make the pancakes, they always have two sides. Is it possible that the offense has as much to do with you as with the person who has offended you? Yes, your son is gay or married someone of whom you disapprove or went to the wrong medical school or has the wrong color hair. But isn’t it YOUR issue with same sex marriage that has caused the kerfuffle? You don’t HAVE to go back to a crummy restaurant, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a relationship with your kid? I’m not saying that you have to forgive and forget; I’m just suggesting that SOMEBODY is going to be picking out your nursing home. Wouldn’t you rather you had sent that person a “We welcome you and your imperfect spouse to the family” card rather than cutting them out of your life?

Because there is still so much more for you to share with your kids-even when they’re older. The first time your son rode his two-wheel bike without training wheels won’t come again. But what about Simon and Garfunkel’s Silent Night with the newscaster talking about Martin Luther King’s march on Cicero in the background?

Click Here for the You Tube Video of Simon and Garfunkel

How is your son going to figure out how to pay off a 30-year mortgage in 15 years without your expertise and insight? You have so much more to share and to teach. If he’s cut out of your life because “you say potato,” how do you think he’s going to learn more from you? And how are you going to have a connection with your grandchildren? They have a lot to learn from you also.

You know the expression, “Pay me now or pay me later”? For $29.42 in today’s dollars, you can have a relationship with your annoying, difficult, purple-haired, gay, adult son. All it takes is a card that says “Welcome to the family.” Twenty years from now you could spend a million dollars and all you can get is a bunch of bad Chinese take-out food.

Now is cheaper.