She had music playing and a bucket beside her.
I leaned against the garage.
“I thought you hated that thing.”
She looked at the car.
“The seats are still ugly.”
“I see.”
“And the color is boring.”
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“Tragic.”
She rolled her eyes.
Then she smiled.
“But it’s mine.”
By the time she’d earned her license, she was driving the silver car without being asked. One Monday morning, she drove it to school.
She didn’t park around the corner.
She didn’t ask me to take her instead.
She pulled directly into the student lot, right where everybody could see her.
I had spent most of Stacy’s life believing that good parenting meant making sure my daughter never felt the shame I’d felt growing up.
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It took an ugly starter car to make me understand how wrong I’d been.
I couldn’t buy enough things to make Stacy immune to other people’s judgment.
All I could do was teach her that she could survive it.
And maybe, eventually, stop believing she had anything to be ashamed of in the first place.
If you heard your teenager bragging that you always cave and would buy them an expensive car no matter how they behaved, would you still give them the gift you had planned?
Enjoyed this story? Here’s another one for you: My daughter called three hours before my 60th birthday dinner with an apology. By the end of that night, I would understand why apologizing to me had become so easy.
