Looking for love, acceptance, who’s to say why she became pregnant at 14? She still doesn’t know.
But she didn’t want the same for her children.
Her oldest, a 19-year-old graduate of Schlagle High School, received a junior college football scholarship. She attended each of his high school games, froze in the bleachers and cheered him on.
Her 17-year-old daughter graduates next year and wants to be a nurse. Schlagle teacher Mal McCluskey called recently and said a boy was hanging all over her. Webster sat her daughter down that night before dinner.
Your conduct and the way you carry yourself are very important, Webster, 34, told her. You don’t want people thinking of you that way. You have more going for you than that. Learn from my mistakes.
Her 12-year-old son is an honor student and a Boy Scout. He plays the violin. At first, the off-tune whine set all their nerves on fire, but either he has improved or their ears have grown accustomed to the sound. They enjoy teasing him about it, but they would never miss a performance. He wants to be a scientist. What that has to do with the violin, Webster doesn’t know. She lets him pursue his interests in any way he sees fit.
Others who have not lived her life may consider her victories small or take them for granted: her high school graduation despite the odds against her; her jobs as an elder care attendant and a bus aide for the Shawnee Mission School District; her 1999 marriage, raising her kids right despite what people may say about her choices.
Don’t do what I did, she reminds her children. Being out of control, not listening to adults.
As a young mother, Webster knows all the tricks. Her kids can’t sneak around her. In some ways, they have all been growing up together and relate well to one another, better perhaps than had she been an older parent.
Way back, she helped raise her younger brother and sister. Picked them up at school, helped them with their homework, cleaned up after them and cooked their dinner.
It was no different with her own kids. No drugs, she tells them. No hanging on the street, and stay in school. You don’t want to go to jail.
It’s rough sometimes. Webster knows many parents who have lost control of their kids. They do all they can, and the child still gets in trouble. Webster doesn’t have answers. She only knows how she raised her children. She instilled expectations. Had she been a slacker, they’d be slackers, too.
If her children get cocky, even her oldest, Webster gives them a look. A mix between a scowl and a cold stare that penetrates walls and makes her loom before them despite her small stature and soft-spoken manner. They may drag when she asks them to do a chore, but they never tell her no. Now her 12-year-old, she had a time with him in Head Start. He wouldn’t listen to his teachers. Had to break him of that.
As much as she loves her children, if she had to do it all over again, she wouldn’t. She regrets the school functions she missed as a teen. Prom especially. Her mother helped her, but when she returned home from school, it was her responsibility to bathe and feed her babies, show them love and put them to bed.
You saw my struggles. Don’t be common. Being common is doing the same old thing everybody else does. Be different.
Every day has its own routine. Weekday mornings, they wake up, shower, get dressed. There isn’t any lounging in front of the TV. Eat breakfast, go to work, attend school, come home. Some chill time, followed by homework, dinner, more chill time, bed.
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