I went to visit my son this weekend in Louisiana. He has moved from the dorm to a house with some of his fraternity brothers. I was very concerned before I left because once again my paycheck from my current company was not very much. We had talked about where I would spend the night. I didn’t have money to book a room in a hotel so we discussed the possibility of me staying in his house.

I had done that before when I went to visit my son in Florida after he had a scooter accident. His roommates were so sweet they didn’t even complain about me sleeping on their couch. They were amazing young men but I didn’t know how these frat boys would feel with me staying in their house.

I had thought I could avoid the whole situation if I just left in the middle of the night on Saturday morning. I figured if I left at 4 or 5 am I could still spend most of the day with him and then turn right around and spend Saturday night at my house. Problem was that we were expecting another torrential downpour and I didn’t want to drive through flooding, or in the dark, if it was raining hard.

I decided to leave on Friday afternoon. The traffic getting out of the metroplex was a bit of a challenge but by the time I hit I-20, I was good to go. I got there at about 8:30 pm. I took him out to eat at Arby’s because I had a coupon. We even got a better deal than the coupon because they were out of roast beef and we got two chicken sandwiches for less than the coupon would have gotten us two roast beef. (That is called a God intervention. 🙂

Then we went back to his house and we arranged all of the things I had brought him from my home. He was so sweet he hung out with me and we watched a movie or at least tried to but it kept stalling. We talked about the night time arrangements and he said I could sleep in his bed and he would sleep on the couch. He even showed me where his ear plugs were because his fan was making a loud noise.

In the morning I apologized to him for being in a predicament where I could not help him out financially. He said he hadn’t expected me to, he just wanted me to bring some stuff from home. I did buy him a desk at a thrift store which will work perfectly for him and I did also take him out to lunch and a movie. I bought him some other things at Walmart and the Dollar Store so it wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to spend money on him, it just was that I didn’t want to spend money on me and a hotel stay would have been doing just that.

After the movie I told him what a good kid he was. I have been blessed with three good kids. As we were driving out of the movie theater parking lot he asked how I had slept. I had actually had a terrific sleep in his bed, noisy fan and all. I had even felt a bit grungy and I still slept fine.

I started thinking about how some people sleep in very fancy hotels and have money to spend on themselves. I realized that one of the reasons I don’t have much money is because I have three kids in college right now and even though I am a skilled professional, my current job does not provide enough income for me. Sometimes I wish I was better off financially but today I realized one very important thing. I may not have a lot of money in the bank but I have been blessed with three wonderful children whom I enjoy tremendously. I would take those three children over a million nights in a five star hotel any day.