I was about ten years old when it happened. My best friend had invited me to come with him to his family’s trip to the Michigan Dunes. Chris and I were close and we played “army” and blew up army men and tanks with his dad’s gun powder he had in the garage. We always played in the sand pile on the side of the house. We would dig tunnels for our soldiers and act out our fantasies. This new adventure promised to be exciting and I would see things I had never seen.

My mother would not let me go for some reason. I was bummed out all weekend long. I was mad at my mother. I think the call came on Sunday afternoon. Chris had taken another friend or a cousin with him instead of me. Chris had done what came natural to him and I and that was to dig. We would have dug tunnels in the large sand dunes and we would be the soldiers and get in the tunnels like our little plastic soldiers. We were only ten, we didn’t know about construction. We were just young boys wanting to explore and acting out.

Chris never came home, the tunnels that he and the other boy built collapsed on them and I’m sure suffocated them in minutes. I would have been right there with Chris and probably making the tunnels deeper and bigger. I think about all the things in my life that I would have missed, or the fact that my own children, or grandchildren wouldn’t be here today.

If my mom had just said yes to make her son happy, life would be so different for so many people. That one little decision that many people have to make about what their children do everyday, can have rippling effects in years to come. Today, on the Birthday of my Mother I say “Thank you Mom for making those tough decisions.”

Because of you, I have all that I have and it doesn’t go unnoticed by me. Let this be a lesson to all the mothers out there, every decision you make with your kids that will have lasting affects even fifty years later.