So I’m tied up in arguments over the police, the definition of terrorism, the progress of peace in Palestine, and I can’t articulate my ideas and my head just hurts. I usually take this as a good sign, one that means that the purpose of this blog – forcing me to think through and clearly articulate my thoughts and opinions – is being met.
(thanks by the way to everyone who is tossing rocks into the soup)
But right now I can’t write about them worth a damn.
Then, scanning the blogs, I read Dawn’s prayer to become a better parent, and there’s something I can start to talk about.
I love being a dad, even when one of my kids gives me shit online. Somehow especially then…
I think I’m a pretty good Dad, although time will tell. I know that I work harder at it than I ever have at anything in my entire life, and that it gives me more pleasure than anything I’ve ever done in my life.
It’s also true that it’s different – and I think harder – for moms. It may be coincidence, but both of my marriages started to splinter about the time the first child were born, and while I certainly have to carry my share of the weight for that, I can also say that I saw the women I’d married…smart, tough, professional, independent women…crack under the burden. Not only the burden of physically bearing children and tending them when they are small and helpless…I was up nights, too, and we were lucky enough to have household help…but the burden of conflicting expectations and conflicting images of who they ought to be and what they ought to hold important.
But those are issues for them, and their blogs, if they ever choose to have one.
For me, becoming a parent has been so incredibly liberating, because it has taken me out of myself.
The best story I can tell is about a ski trip we took with the boys and two childless good friends … they had the ‘first chair up, last chair up’ attitude we’d always had when we skied together.
But now we had the boys…ages six and four…and the reality was that we were going to move on what I called ‘kid time’…we were going to get it done, but on the boys’ pace. By the end of the trip, we were so frustrated with our friends, and they with us, that violence felt like a real possibility. And I felt like I had to make a choice, and I did…I chose to move on ‘kid time’. And learning about ‘kid time’, and the ability to still get them where I want them to go while accepting that the path we take may not exactly be the one I planned on, is the best lesson I could have received.
This means that I’ve always dealt with my sons as ‘people’ even when I recognized that when young, they didn’t have the capacity to be truly independent. I called this ‘peas or carrots’; they always had choices at dinnertime…I just determined what the choices were…peas or carrots? And they were always willing to stand up and tell me what they wanted…while I determined if they got it or not.
I have close friends who have raised their children along the other paths…where the children were browbeaten and given no say; and where the children basically ran the house. In both cases, both the parents and kids seem to be coming out broken.
It’s damn hard. You get called away just as you’re getting ready to go to the important meeting, or there is a knock at the bedroom door at the worst possible breathing-hard moment. Their shoes come untied – again – as you are late getting them to school.
And for me, somehow, the burden always lifts just as it becomes unbearable. I find another bit of patience when I thought I was done. I turn and apologize after saying something that I wish I hadn’t said, and the anger lifts. And the road ahead becomes that much less steep when I do. And that ability…the ability to reach a little further,to be a little better…is the gift my sons have given to me.
We’re not done yet…one is away at school, one in high school, and one in first grade…but I’m proud as hell of them, and hopeful for all of our futures.
Hang tough, Dawn. It’s all worth it.