Accidents Happen_(2)

Hello, my name is Rebecca, a mother of three and a woman in a healthy and lengthy marriage. I had met my husband, Mike, at the age of nineteen. During our first night together we made a beginning for our first son, Jeremy. Accidents happen, as we say, but we just knew we wanted to keep him. A year later a little less accidental continuation happened in the form of our first daughter, Jessica. A couple of years later our third miracle, Miranda, was born. Although we were happy with our situation for a long time, neither of us thought it was appropriate to think anything more “permanent” solution to birth control as we were still so very young.

Some may say that we had a “shotgun wedding” but neither of us felt that way, as we were genuinely in love. Eighteen years into our marriage we were still very much in love with each other. Of course, there are the regular ups and downs like in every long marriage, but everything levels up with time. That summer we noticed that our eldest, “our baby boy” as we still jokingly called him, was starting to mature a lot. He was spending ever more time with his friends outside home. To us he said that these friends were “some guys from his class”, but honestly, we had no idea with who he spent his time. We just assumed that they really were some guys from his class, as by now he had never done anything stupid and been trustworthy every parent’s dream boy. And who were we to judge, as we ourselves had been quite outgoing in our teen years, even becoming teen parents.

One rainy Saturday, as I was about to start doing the laundry, I went to Jeremy’s room in order to pick up his dirty clothes. But then I noticed that there was something weird going on. He wasn’t there for that time as he was out with the friends again, but my eyes focused on the corner of his bed. Something was hidden in there. Although I had said to myself that I am not that kind of mother who sniffs to her children’s lives too much, but that just caught my eye so much. I wrap up the sheets from his bed and saw a box of condoms in there. It was opened package, one of them was missing. “Oh my good, has my baby boy started having sex?” I thought to myself. It surprised me, as he had been really slowly developing, his attitude and habits had started to change for really under a year ago. Without thinking any longer, I just confiscated the package of condoms. “I really need to have a serious conversation with my son about this.”

I resumed to the laundering, but it kept bothering me.

Several hours later Jeremy returned home. Although he liked spending his time with his friends, Saturday nights were just so holy in our family that we spent our time together, eating some junk food and watching whatever crap came on cable.
“Hi mom!” Jeremy says as he enters the livingroom where I was lying alone on the couch, wondering what we were about to watch that night.
“Hi Jeremy!”
I had decided to break it to him immediately, as I know that he would notice it straight away that I had taken something else from his room than just dirty laundry.
“Jeremy. I know this may irritate and make you feel uncomfortable, but as I was picking up your laundry, I also spotted something else that I hadn’t thought that I would find there” I said, feeling guilt that I brought it up after all
“Wait, what, WHAT?” Jeremy said, first with anger which quite fast changed to quilt and embarrassment as he realized what I had found there.
“What are these?” I asked him as I throw the box of condoms on the couch table, trying to be solid but not judgemental.
Jeremy went silent for a while. “Mom, they are condoms. And I know that you may want to talk about this, do you think this is the right time? We are supposed to start our Saturday night TV-marathon and dad, Jess and Miranda may pop into the room any moment now” Jeremy said, really cleverly guiding the conversation away.
“You actually are right” I said as I took the box away from the table and threw it to the cupboard. “But we really need to talk about this, seriously”
“Yes mom. We can”

The evening passed. We ate pizza and watched some weird European movie found on an obscure cable channel. As the evening turned into the night, first Miranda left followed closely by Jess. After probably half an hour, Mike followed them. “Honey, I’m just too exhausted and I believe even that little wine is hitting my head too much.