My son asked me, ‘Am I an accident?’ Here’s how I answered him | Opinion

Jason was in high school and already tall enough that his knees touched the dash in the passenger seat of the 1981 Toyota two-door that I drove for years. We were on Highway 182 between Castroville and Salinas for a day of errands before school started the following day.

Out of the blue, Jason asked, “Mom, what’s the rhythm method?”

Raising kids requires readiness, correct? As parents, we never know what’s going to come out of their mouths. Questions, questions, questions. I was one of the parents who invited those questions. And I made a habit of answering honestly and factually, with as much composure as possible, no matter what area we were getting into: religion, law, politics or rather intimate sexual matters.

They knew they could ask, and they knew I would answer.

This question caught me off guard, though, because there had been no tentative buildup or preliminary exploration of the subject. Just the one question: “What’s the rhythm method?”

I quickly put together some facts in my head, and then I opened my mouth to do my job: give him the information he needed without over-elaborating.

“The rhythm method is a birth control practice used by couples who don’t want to conceive a child and don’t want to employ artificial birth control such as medication,” I said.

I went on to tell Jase that some women have a predictable cycle that can be charted, and this allows the couple to schedule intercourse during that part of her cycle when she is least likely to be fertile and able to conceive.

“But,” I went on to say, “this method is definitely not fool proof. Schedules and cycles can vary without any noticeable outside indication.”

And then I went further. “As an example, when Dad and I spent the Christmas of 1969 with Aunt Dixie in Texas, we had one — and only one — episode of unprotected intimacy in her guest room. We believed it was the safe part of my cycle. We were wrong. You were born nine months later.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, a shocked Jason shouted, “You mean I’m a mistake?”

“What?” I thought. This was the question I would never have anticipated. Maybe the most important question he would ever ask. My precious, curious, adorable baby who developed into a precocious child who absorbed everything in his environment and went on to become a young man who personified everything good and profitable in life. A mistake?

This was the question I had better be able to answer.

“Oh, my goodness, Jason, you were not a mistake. You were a gift made even more precious because you were not planned, engineered and expected as the result of some human idea or action. We just weren’t that smart. No, babe, you were not a mistake. You were a miracle.”

Jason seemed OK with that answer. The subject never came up again. Throughout their childhood, I learned from my two sons. I have alluded to the struggles of my own growing up: A dad who named me and then disappeared, a mother who did not leave, but whose parenting style lacked love, compassion, gentleness and insight into the fragile heart of the guileless, innocent child.

As a young adult, I knew I wanted to have children. And I knew that I would be a very different kind of parent than my mother or father.

I knew this because I held onto a memory from my very early childhood: In this memory, we are living in an apartment above the hatchery my father managed in San Leandro. My older brother is at school; I am 3 years old and I am sitting on the shiny wooden hallway floor. My little brother is 18 months old, and he is in the bedroom through the doorway on my left. He is not alone. My mother is there with him. She is beating him. I hear his piercing cries of pain and panic.

My little brother’s suffering at that moment brought one thought to my impressionable young child’s mind — a thought that has remained with me throughout my life: When I am big, I will never hurt someone who is small.

A therapist once told me that a thought occasioned by the traumatic events I witnessed that day could make a life-changing difference in the life I lived. I believe he was right. I was a very different kind of parent than I might have been.

And with my two boys, I finally had the happy childhood I missed in my own growing up. That happy childhood with them included unexpected questions and answers that came from a heart filled with the love and wonder of keeping company with miracles.

Bunny Stevens lives in Modesto, her hometown, and has served on The Modesto Bee Community Advisory Board. She is the opening courtesy clerk at the Safeway supermarket on McHenry Avenue and an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. Reach her at BunnyinModesto@gmail.com

This story was originally published September 6, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "My son asked me, ‘Am I an accident?’ Here’s how I answered him | Opinion."