Things I would do differently

I found out this week that my barely 18 year old, high school senior niece is pregnant. She was going to have college soccer scouts out in the spring to watch her play. But you can't play soccer when you're pregnant. She's a beautiful girl who craves the attention of men and wears too much makeup. She's also smart and talented and I hope that this set back doesn't hinder her future too much. However it got me to thinking. If I could do it over, what would I do differently?

The first thing that comes to mind is my grandmother. On our very first trip to the mall when I was 13 she had a stroke. Several more small strokes as well as a more major one would follow. In the coming years she would lose the use of her left side as well as her ability to communicate. That amazing woman was my world. She raised me for the first 6 years while my mother was having back surgery after back surgery. I would spend every weekend and most of my summer in the tiny town of Sasakawa, OK learning to bake, how to take care of my skin, how to sew,and how to make amazing bread and butter pickles. I also learned to drive a stick shift, a tractor and a four wheeler. She showed me how to garden, how to run a fence line and how to birth a calf. She also taught me that sometime you can be right, or you can be happy. I learned how to take care of a husband and a family. She and my grandfather had never even kissed anyone else. And in her last months, when she was in the hospital more than out of it, I should have been by her side every second I could spare. But I was 17 and when she passed away a month before my high school graduation I realized that too late. I will regret that for the rest of my life.

One of the other more important things in my life was my best friend and my first love. If I could do it over I would realize that the relationship we had, even at 14, was true love. I would have put more effort into our friendship and not worried so much about what everyone else thought. Because my best friend at 12 is still my very best friend now, at 25. He is funny and supportive and would drop everything at 3am to help me or just to talk. I would have ignored my mother when she told me it was just puppy love. When he told me the guy I was dating at 18 was totally wrong for me I would have listened. Because he knows me better than anyone else and that one simple conversation would have saved me from the one and only abusive relationship I've ever been in.

Above all else I would have confronted my parents at 16 when they decided to divorce. I should have cast aside the doubts I had that they wouldn't listen to "just a kid" and pointed out that their marriage was going down the drain because they both have an addiction problem. My dad is what they call a functioning alcoholic. His drinking doesn't affect his job but he smells like peppermint schnapps at 9 am. My mother uses her bad back as an excuse to take Loritab, Tylox, Morphine, Xanax, Soma, and Oxy Contin every day. Twice a day. If I had told them then, then maybe my dad wouldn't have gotten a DUI and maybe my mother wouldn't be falling asleep in the middle of conversations. Because now that I'm older and I'm petrified to leave my child alone with them, I realize that if I had spoken up 10 years ago maybe my son could really know his grandparents. But how do you help someone that doesn't think they have a problem?

Most of the things in my life that I recognize as mistakes have made me who I am today. Most of them I wouldn't change for fear I wouldn't be the person I am today. But sometimes, when I look at my nieces and nephews and I see them afraid to speak up or preoccupied with things that they will only later realize aren't really important I wish I could make them understand. But then I think that sometimes learning things the hard way is the only way to make the lesson stick.