All the Things I Wish I Did for My Son Over the Last 18 Years

By Rachel Levy Lesser

When my son was in first grade, he came home from school one day with a way-too-big T-shirt that the teacher gave out to the whole class for their upcoming field day. On the back of the shirt, it said in large black, block lettering “Class of 2022.” This was way back in 2011 when 2022 seemed about as far away and futuristic as 2001: A Space Odyssey when I watched it in the 1980s as a child not understanding most of it.

And yet here we are, the strange futuristic land of the year 2022, the year my oldest child will graduate from high school. He will leave for college in late August. He already knows where he is going to school, and that makes it seem even more real, and while not quite as futuristic, still unbelievable.

I really tried to hear the wise older moms who told me that the days would go by slowly but the years would go by fast. However, this time with my kids seemed like it would last forever, especially because time with my son is inextricably linked to time without my mother. She died when my son was just a few months old. The fact that I have raised a child to legal adulthood without her in my life to guide me along the way seems perhaps more unfathomable than my son leaving for college this year.

My baby son and I during the times I thought would last forever

I’m a doer. I thrive on productivity.

I did a lot with and for my son, but now I find myself thinking about all the things I meant to do with him, but never did.

I never did tummy time with him. I half smiled, nodding my head to the pediatrician when she asked if I put my baby son on his stomach to allow him to develop the proper strength and skills to crawl, and I guess eventually thrive in the world. He cried on his tummy. I started to call it torture time, and I gave up. I’m not advocating for others to do the same. I just couldn’t take it. My son did eventually crawl and walk and now it seems he will graduate from high school, but I still feel guilty that I never took that time for tummy time.

I never did a baby book. I am creative but not crafty, and I told myself then that I was trying to be present in each moment of his growing up so that I didn’t need to capture it in a picture and then put it in a scrapbook and write down what he was doing at every moment. In retrospect, it may have been a good idea to do a baby book, because in all honestly so many of those moments are a blur to me now.

I never took my son to Disney World. He was so petrified of those characters in masks that we once had to leave a baseball game in the fourth inning because the mascot came too close to him. The thought of making a special trip to what most people call the happiest place on earth — when he might have viewed it as the scariest place on earth — was just not in the cards for us. When our family friends talk about their amazing, unforgettable trips to Disney, I feel bad about not having a similar story.

I really tried to hear the wise older moms who told me that the days would go by slowly but the years would go by fast. However, this time with my kids seemed like it would last forever, especially because time with my son is inextricably linked to time without my mother.

I never did Shabbat dinner. Before I had kids, I had a boss who I admired both professionally and personally. She had Shabbat dinner with her husband and young kids every Friday night. No matter what was going on in their busy lives, they gathered together around their dining room table, lit the candles, said the blessings, and spent that quality time together. I told my young self that I would do this one day when I got married and had kids. I never did.

My family had dinner together most weeknights at our kitchen table. Sometimes we talked about our days, and some nights we wolfed down our food before running off to sports practices or Hebrew school or back upstairs for homework.

On Friday nights, in lieu of Shabbat dinner, we ate pizza or take-out Chinese food. I would be exhausted from a long week that I thought would never end. A handful of times we ate our take-out food or even homemade food in the dining room, and every once in a while, we had challah that I had managed to pick up from our local bakery. In more recent years, I baked the challah. But by then my kids were out of the house on Friday nights, and oftentimes my husband and I met our friends out. We ate the challah the next morning in the form of French toast. Maybe that was our thing?

Of course, there are plenty of things I did do with my son — things I could have never imagined doing back when I daydreamed about Shabbat dinners with my fantastical family of the future.

I took my son to a Wiggles concert. The Wiggles do not wear character masks. They show their real, friendly Australian faces, and my son was obsessed with them. I played Wiggles’ CDs on endless loops in my car back when people listened to CDs in their cars. I can still sing the lyrics to about eighty percent of their songs.

I attended more sporting events, games, matches, and races than I knew was possible. There was soccer, basketball, tee-ball, baseball, flag football, lacrosse, tennis, golf, and skiing — the list goes on. Maybe I could if I took more pictures, something else I think I should have done more. Then there were professional sporting events — in person and on television, late into the night complete with bedtime negotiations and promises of studying.

My 18-year-old son and me. The years did indeed go fast.

I had conversations with my son that I never could have imagined, some deep dives into sports and athletic career records I have no business knowing. Other conversations are more memorable, more painful, more joyful, more rewarding as I look back on them now.

We talked about life not being fair; about my son changing schools when I knew it was the best thing for him, but he couldn’t understand it and had no interest in it either; about what it means to grow up, to take on more real responsibility, to be a good friend, to do the right thing even when it’s easier not to.

Perhaps these things that I have done are enough? I guess I will never know. I suppose they will have to be.

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Rachel Levy Lesser is the author of Life’s Accessories, A Memoir (And Fashion Guide). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Glamour, Parenting, Modern Loss, Kveller, and more. When not writing, Rachel can be found baking, as she hosts a show on A Mighty Blaze where she interviews cookbook authors and bakes along with them in her home kitchen. (She still lets her teenage kids lick the bowl.) Rachel is also forever practicing yoga, knitting scarves and wearing them, indoors.