He's a Very Naughty Boy!

I have only one regret in this life of mine. I may have other regrets, but this single regret eclipses all else. Besides, this is the mother of all regrets and it spawned a series of regrets that followed on from the original, because once I started, I just couldn’t stop.

No, that’s a lie. I could have stopped at any time, but I didn’t, and I often wonder why that was, as well as wondering what would have happened if I had put the brakes on everything and done what I suppose was the right thing, only, even now I don’t know whether that really is the case, because you see, mum knows best.

Mum always knows best. 

And I am his mum.

He was my only child. My son. And he was a gift. A gift from God himself.

That was the problem, and it was a big problem. The kind of problem that warrants being written with a capital P, if not entirely in capitals.

The Problem.

Nathan is my world. Always has been. My own little miracle. That’s what children are, aren’t they? A bundle of perfection that changes everything. We’re not perfect though are we? This world of ours certainly isn’t. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about that. Being the sole person responsible for a perfect being and knowing deep down inside that it is you who will ultimately be responsible for that being’s corruption.

There isn’t much you can do about that of course. Protecting a baby from the world outside is obvious. You absolutely must do that. But then your child grows up, and if you haven’t prepared them for the world outside, then they will have a rude awakening. We don’t want them to grow up. Life is harsh and cruel and we don’t want them to be hurt. The more we try to prevent the certainty of life, the more damage we do, even as we lie to ourselves and misconstrue a feeling for love, when love is something that you do. You live love, you don’t just feel it and stop there, when there is so much work to be done, so much living to do. 

I may sound wise. Maybe I am, but all of this is after the event and I have learnt by bitter experience. I have been my own worst enemy, and all I needed to do was to utter a handful of words and everything would have been different. I never could bring myself to do that though. I suppose I was scared and my fear grew until it controlled me.

Nothing in my life has prepared me for the scale of fear that I am experiencing now though, and the burden of my pain threatens to crush me. 

How could I have gotten this so badly wrong?

Nathan was born out of wedlock.

What an antiquated expression that is, more so in this day and age! It was going that way at the time. Marriage and monogamy were outmoded. New generations came along and eschewed tradition. These kids were bigger and better and there was no way they were going to listen to their elders. Their elders were lumpen and clumsy things and lacked the enlightenment of the new generations. Experience counted for nought. History was an unsavoury set of stories that caused deep shame. All history was, was a stick with which to beat the parents and grandparents of the up and coming generation. 

In the midst of this new dawn, there emerged a vast new world that was laughingly called social media and that created enough noise to drown out, not only sense, but facts. There was nothing social about this new world. People could act any way they wanted, be anything they liked and say things that would not have been possible in a true, social context. 

A social species was isolated down to an individual level and society collapsed in on itself, only no one noticed, or if they did, then their voices were drowned out in all of the narcissistic hullabaloo.

Nathan was born into that, and I did my very my best to keep him away from it all.

I sometimes wonder whether he ever stood a chance, but then I didn’t help his chances so I have to be careful that I am not just making excuses for what I did.

At the time of Nathan’s conception, I was dating a lovely and kind man. Jack was everything I wanted in a man and he was quiet and I loved that about him above all else. He was a man of few words and better still, that extended to the myriad lands of the internet. He was good with his hands was Jack, and that is not a euphemism. We were waiting. Mostly, this was Jack’s wish. I’d have gone all the way soon after I met him as he I knew he was a good catch and I thought that he was probably the one. He was the one. I think I always knew that, but I most definitely know it now.

When I fell pregnant I should have told him. I should have said those six words and everything would have been different.

Why didn’t I?

I told you already, I was scared. But there was also a noble element to my decision. I loved Jack and I didn’t want to put him through a life like that. I didn’t think it was fair.

Some will say that it was not my decision to make. Try telling that to all the mothers out there. Better still, try telling that to all of the people who dwell in echo chambers of their own making. They have their validation and they will not be moved by the likes of you, regardless of the truth of the matter.

I hurt Jack. I knew it at the time and I’ve known it every day since. I knew in the moment that I told him that I was pregnant that I was his one, and that I had wounded him in a way that was deep and cruel and would never truly heal. I often wonder where he went and what he did with his life. I hope he found someone else and had the life he had always wanted, and the life he deserved.

As I showed and my bump was no longer something I could conceal, there were questions. Many questions. I retained what is sometimes called a dignified silence. That silence did not work in the house of my mother and father. Their anger and shame broke that silence and the noise of it became so loud that I had to move out. 

At first I struggled. Sleeping on friends’ sofas and sometimes on the floor of an upstairs box room. I even slept in a barn when there was nowhere else for me and Nathan to sleep. I moved around quite a bit in the early years, but things settled after that and it got easier.

I say it got easier, I never forgot those words and the unease of not saying them followed me wherever I went. There was no starting over for me, not with those words hanging over me.

Nathan grew into a little boy and he did the things that a little boy did. He was remarkable only to me, and unremarkable when surrounded by all the other little boys and girls. He was never top of the class, but he was close. I suppose I should have encouraged him more on that front, but those unspoken words weighed heavily upon me and I suppose I didn’t want my little star to shine too brightly. I didn’t want him to stand out and get noticed, I feared what would happen to us if that day came to pass. 

All that I wanted for Nathan was a normal life. I wanted him to be like all the other little boys and girls. I sometimes wished that I’d lied to Jack and passed Nathan off as his child. Maybe that would have made a difference. But I couldn’t lie to Jack though. I’ve never been all that good at lying. Concealing the truth maybe, outright lies, no.

It was when Nathan reached puberty that the problems started. The changes to his body unsettled him and he began asking me questions about his father. To my shame, I panicked and having said I was no good at lying, I lied to my child. I’d had over ten years to concoct a story, but I’d failed to do so. When Nathan confronted me, the fires of his anger frightened me and I could see the very real possibility of losing him, so I created the story of a married man who could not leave his family. A teacher I met one day in town, and fell for. The details were all Jack. Jack was the only man I had ever loved and so that part was easy. The lie flowed from there and once it was told I could not take it back.

Nathan became angrier and angrier during those years. He wanted to know who his father was. He wanted to meet him. He wanted to know him. I told him I could never tell him the identity of his father, and I never did. Frustrated by my intransigence, he regularly got into trouble, but his school work never suffered. I always wondered about that. He was a bright kid and for some reason he related to adults better than the children around him. On his day, when he was on form, he could hold court with a group of adults and had them eating out of his hand with the things he said. There was a charm to him and it was powerful. The kid had something about him and people felt it.

I thought he’d go to university, but he didn’t. He took up an apprenticeship locally. I was happy with that. He stayed with me, and that was all I had ever wanted. He seemed to calm down and my worries about him getting into trouble with the police and things spiralling down from there never transpired. I watched him grow into a fine young man, but this was bitter-sweet for me as I dreaded the day that he met someone and moved out. 

That never happened. He had female friends, but never anyone special in his life.

The years went by and they went by far too quickly. My boy was all of a sudden a man and at some point, in his late twenties, something began to change about him, and as he changed, my bubble of influence and control burst and I became a spectator to his life. He went out more and suddenly he had a growing group of friends and with them came purpose. 

There was a sense of things gearing up. An energy about Nathan, and I saw the way those around him gazed upon my boy, only I began to understand that he was no longer my boy and maybe he never had been.

That’s a terrible moment in the phases of parenthood, when your child is independent and no longer reliant upon you. Worse is when they chart a course away from you and stop listening to anything you say.

I felt like this version of Nathan had outgrown me, he was lost to me and there was nothing I could do to get my old Nathan back.

I thought about that handful of words and realised that maybe the time to say them had now passed. That the only reason I had an urge to say them now was because I would do anything to keep my boy. Anything at all.

It turns out that I have done everything and anything I could to keep him, worst of all was to turn a blind eye to what he was becoming. I knew what was happening all along. I could see it. But I did nothing to stop it.

Today, four men arrived at our home. They sat outside revving the engines of their motorbikes and shook the very foundations the house stood upon. The sound of those engines was ancient and terrible and rose up from the ground under me. I quaked at that sound and the sight of these four, clenching my fists and digging my nails into the palms of my hands until I drew blood. Even then, I mistook them for hell’s angels and I thought my boy was in the worst kind of trouble, having crossed a line he should never have gone near. I thought about calling the police, but somehow knew that that would make no difference. No difference at all. 

It was too late for that.

It was far too late for that.

As I stared out of the window at these visitors, I sensed Nathan walk past me. Heard the front door open and I watched out of the front window as he joined the four men. Only they weren’t men, and my assessment of who and what they were was not all that far from the mark, and yet it was about as far away as it was possible to get. 

For the very first time, I saw Nathan for what he really was and I knew it to be my fault.

I denied Nathan’s true nature throughout his life, and I prevented him from walking the path that had been laid out for him from the moment he had been created. 

Parents are gifted with a bundle of perfection and the trick is not to corrupt that bundle too much. I think we are given perfection so that we have a glimpse of all that we can be, the blueprint for the evolution and betterment of our species. In seeing this perfection, we stand half a chance to see the good in another person and maybe we go as far as rediscovering the good that resides within us. A good parent sees that good and nurtures and protects it. I don’t think we are capable of seeing everything of that perfection in all its glory, that is not our place. We are supposed to be selfless and do our best by our children though and that is enough, or it is at least a good start.

I was blind. I chose to look away and I failed you Nathan, and for that I am so very and truly sorry.

I should have told you from the very start and I should have lived that truth, I should have lived your truth from the beginning.

You see Nathan, you are the son of God.

At least that was what I think the angel told me, but it was so long ago now and I have denied it over and over again, without end, and although I never managed to erase it, now I come to look at it again, it’s blurred and all messed up. Perhaps it was that you were made by God. See? Even now I am attempting to deny my part in this. Refusing to believe that I could have corrupted the son of God and brought about the end of days, for I see now that that is the very day that is upon us. 

Maybe it was always going to go this way. Maybe you never had a chance. Maybe I never had a chance. Maybe we all deserve this and this was always how it was going to go for us. 

We had our chance and we were given two thousand years to do something about it, but we blew it.

It makes a kind of sense to me. You were the Second Coming and you arrived in a corrupt world that was already on the brink. Things have been coming to an end for a while now. I see that now. This is why you are here. This is what you are for. On the day you were born, this world of men began its selfish decline and there was no stopping it.

And now there is no stopping you.

Now, as I watch you through the pain of glass, through the window in the front room of the home we shared for all those years. The home you grew up in. I like to think I played my part well after all.

Because, when all is said and done, I am your mum. 

I protected you from this cruel world. A world that did not deserve you. A world that could only hurt you and fill you with pain.

At least there won’t be anything written about me and the story of your life this time around. Soon there will be nothing left. Nothing at all. I should be sad about that, but I remember the day you were born. I was so very happy. I wouldn’t change that for anything. I wouldn’t change you for anything.

You’re my little boy, and you always will be. I don’t care about the rest of it. I only care about you. 

You’re mine Nathan. 

You never needed anyone else.

He had no right to try to take you away from me before you were even born! I’m your mum and I love you in a way no one else can. Not even Him.

Now go do what it is that you must do.

Do what no one else can, and make me proud.

Goodbye, son. I’ll miss you.