December Daily: Parenthood

[resonant]

kass asks: Tell me, if you will, what you enjoy most about parenthood?

The kidlet, believe it or not, will be sixteen in three weeks.

More and more, I can see them coiling to spring away. I'm going to hate to see them go -- I would be happy if the three of us could live together indefinitely -- but on the other hand, they're looking forward to it so!

Parenthood, taken minute by minute, is sometimes a grind. Especially with small children, it's relentless -- however tired you might be, however many millions of dollars you would pay for an hour of uninterrupted solitude, you still have to be there.

You have to be there with a level of present-ness, of focused intelligence and attention, that very few jobs demand, ready to leap to stop a toddler from swallowing a cigarette butt, or to explain to a four-year-old that animals died so that we could eat meat, or to explain to a ten-year-old that you can't tell bad guys by the way they look, or to help a child understand that sometimes you get really angry at their dad, and sometimes you get really angry at them, and sometimes they get really angry at you, and that's all OK and nobody's going to get hurt, even if your own childhood experience is that that wasn't true.

But for me it's been deeply joyful, too, in a number of ways:



1. Getting to not make certain parenting mistakes.

I'm sure we're far from perfect parents, but I promise you that we've never told them that they don't feel what they say they feel, or opened their mail or read their diary, or snatched a project out of their hands when they weren't doing it "right," or told them they were a selfish child when what we meant was that they were using an impolite tone of voice, or tickled them when they didn't want to be tickled.

Sometimes I look back on all the parents I've witnessed and sort of go "Nyah!" and stick my tongue out at them.

2. The ways they're like us.

There are very few joys of parenthood like hearing one of your own sayings come out of your teenager's mouth! I overheard the kidlet once saying to a friend, "Well, you know how it is -- the reward for good work is more work," and I had to slip into another room so they wouldn't see me gloating.

3. The ways they're not like us.

This is a whole point of view that didn't exist in the world just a few years ago! They're good at disagreeing -- they don't scold or attack, but they stand their ground. Their thoughts on religion are especially interesting.

4. Seeing them exercise social courage.

They're an oddball, but they're not an anxious oddball, and most bullies aren't really determined enough to keep trying to make an insult stick when the recipient just gives them a puzzled look and goes on wearing socks that don't match. So they're in a good position to stand up for oddballs who are anxious. It does my heart good to see them do it.

5. I'm going to say again what I said on Table Talk when they were six months old: Dear God in heaven, I never knew I had it in me to love anyone this much.

Comments

[tevere]

♥

[resonant]

Back atcha!