The world is full of re-used greetings and recycled grins, like secondhand birthday cards with the names scribbled out. We are obsessed with perfection because we want what we can’t have and aim for what we can’t achieve. People worship morality, while the saints look down and curse our names. Atheists drown their sorrows in holy water and flick bible pages in Church like they flick their cigarettes in a bar. Hypocrisy stains our food, taints our water, and poisons our air.
In a world so backward, I won’t let my son live wrapped in pretension. He’ll live a skeptic, a scarred human face upright and exposed. He won’t be told to be perfect. He’ll be told to be him. My son won’t be like the others.
I’ll teach him. I’ll teach him life isn’t a test, but an experience, and that you can’t fail a memory. I won’t force-feed him a conscience, or tattoo right and wrong across his existence like an ugly birthmark. I’ll teach him it’s okay to crave recognition, to feed on approval, and to dream of popularity. That he’s allowed to breathe love like a former smoker breathes secondhand smoke, if soft sticky affection is the only thing that coats his lungs. I’ll teach him perfection is the ability to accept imperfection, and true courage is the courage to admit you’re not courageous. I won’t mold his beliefs, but give him the clay to shape his own views. His potter’s wheel may stop turning, and he may be left with a clumsy heap of opinions, but his hands won’t stop shaping. I won’t scold at his mistakes, but let my anger simmer gently until forgiveness brews. He’ll learn the most painful thing can be a mirror, but he can tilt it to get his best angle, and if his eyes still don’t sparkle the way others do, it’s because their eyes only sparkle when they’re looking at him.
I’ll teach him falling is allowed, as long as he gets back up because the only scar that remains is the judgment from those who saw you hit the floor. I’ll tell him if he’s afraid to cry, stand outside and let the rain hide his tears. When his wife asks why he loves the rain, to spit and screams, “’cause I’m not clean enough.” I’ll teach him his halo is imprinted on his soul rather than worn on his head. Virginity can’t be bought and impurities exchanged. The only store that sells them is the heart, and there he’ll find a note from the Lord, “out for eternity, see you in hell.” If he turns that note over, he’ll find my own shady handwriting, “God may have left you but I never will.” I’ll teach him he’s not expected to be Jesus; he’s allowed to run on fumes rather than walk on water. He can hang his head and not on the cross.
Instead of turning water into wine or feeding the five thousand, it’s okay to just sit, pissed and hungry. When the world is obsessed with obsessing over others, he’ll know it’s okay to obsess over himself.
When my boy enters the world, I’ll cover his eyes and shade him from the light. The light will only dwindle the older he gets. A light that seeps into a soul like paint on cracked pavement, only to erode from life’s inevitable weathering. He’ll ask why there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, and I’ll tell him he’s already reached the finish.
My son will know he’s no gift to this earth. He’ll know he’s my son.
Not perfect.
But mine.