A parenting sin...

Last evening, my son's girlfriend came over, which, in itself, is not news. She spends lots of time at our house. I have to say - I love her. She is a Good Thing for him, and he glows when she is around.

While my son was growing up, I would occasionally think about how I was going to feel when another woman moved into his life and, well, took my place. I imagine most mothers with male offspring wonder about this. There is, after all, that tired cliche that goes something like this:

A daughter is a daughter
all her life.
A son is a son
until he takes a wife.

I am pretty sure that my own mother-in-law felt this way about me when we first got married. I understand now how she probably felt back then. I was an interloper, dragging her son off to be cared for by a woman hadn't birthed him, nursed him through childhood illnesses, watched him hit his first baseball and sent him off knowing she would be replaced.

So, I waited for this to happen to my son. And, sure enough, he looked around and he fell. Hard.

But, when faced with this new paradigm, I realized that it made me happy to see him so happy. When she's around, he smiles and laughs more. He is kinder to everyone, and he engages in conversations willingly. He is, in short, better for being with her. And that's not something I want to mess up.

So, like him, I've fallen in love with her too, and with all of the good she brings to his life.

But I committed a very serious faux pas yesterday. While he and his girlfriend were around, I found that I needed something heavy moved.

So I said, and I quote, "Teetee, will you carry this out to the garage?" I wasn't thinking, and out popped one of his toddler nicknames.

I realized my blunder when there were seconds of dead and heavy silence. Then, girlfriend let out a huge belly laugh.

"You can NEVER call me that, ever," snarled my son.

But we ended up sharing a laugh about it, and it felt good. We - his girlfriend and I - both love him, and we both want to see him happy.

I don't know what the future holds for these two - they're both so young, with so much ahead of them. But I remain thankful that she is in his life right now, and I wonder if she will now call him Teetee too. I hope so.