Wow - 2 posts in a day!

Don't get your hopes up that this will be a regular thing.....

I just returned from taking L (my 9 year old son) to see the local high school's production of "The Diary of Anne Frank."  Good production, nice to see so many of my past students in lead roles, and great to experience their newly remodeled theater.

What stinks is the fact that I felt obligated as a mother to take my son to see the play so that he can learn, even at his young age, about the horrible things mankind can do.  A wise woman (actually the mother of a friend of mine) once told me that our children aren't our possessions.  They belong to the world and our job as parents is to use our time with them to help them become the best people they can be so when the time is right, we can give them back to the world so that they can make it a better place.  This statement has helped me with my helicopter parenting (which is another blog post, or 11, in itself) and remind me about what my role is in this whole motherhood thing.  I'm not just raising a son, I'm raising a future adult who will make adult decisions that will affect others.

So back to Anne Frank.  I took L tonight because a week or so ago he asked me about the Nazis.  Don't know where he heard about them, but Pandora's box was open and there was no shutting it.  So we had that talk and I had to face the fact that my little boy now knew that mankind can do truly horrible things.  I hated bursting that bubble.  Really, I did.  But I realized that, just as my parents heard stories in their childhood and I was introduced to a holocaust survivor at an assembly in high school, it is our job to make sure that those atrocities are never forgotten.

Yes, it is hard to tell my son that sometimes people make horrific decisions that have horrific results.  But by telling him this, I'm helping him understand that life is about decisions, good and bad.  After the play we talked about what the friends of the Franks risked in hiding and providing for them and both agreed that if, heaven forbid, we were faced with the same situation, we hoped we'd make the same decision they did.

L summed it up best on the way home when he said, "Mom, that play was Corner (his prized flannel blanket) worthy."  Sometimes life is.