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I’ve been a single dad for 13 years. As with most single parents — and
indeed with most parents — it hasn’t always been easy.
People sometimes say that parenting is the toughest job you’ll ever
love. But I believe that parenting is sometimes so tough — and
exhausting — that you don’t always remember to slow down enough to love
it. Sometimes the love is registered in retrospect.
We jockey to give our children the best without giving them so much that
they can’t appreciate what they have. We try to encourage them without
coddling them. We lavish gifts upon them while simultaneously trying to
nurture grit within them.
Parents walk a thin line between oppositional forces, never knowing if
we are truly getting it right, judging ourselves and being judged by
others.
And we are inundated by studies and books and advice: do this or that if
you want your child to succeed and not spend his or her 20s on your
sofa.
I try to tune most of it out. When I feel overwhelmed, I call my mother.
She always seems to know what to say. I guess that’s why they call it
“mother’s wit.”
When my three children were younger, and the strain of taking care of
them seemed as though it would overwhelm me, my mother would tell me
what an elderly babysitter once told her when she too felt overwhelmed:
“Baby, one day they’ll be able to get themselves a cup of water.”
It was a simple way of saying that children grow up and become more
self-reliant and eventually they set out on their own to chart their own
course. You won’t always have to wait on them hand and foot.
She told me to remember that the more people a child has who truly loves
him or her, the happier that child will be. So I work hard to maintain
and expand their circles of love.
She taught me that parenting was a lot like giving a hug: It’s all about
love and pressure and there is no one way to do it.
She taught me that sometimes you have to make time for yourself so that
you will have energy to give to your children. Allow them to have a
pizza night every now and then. An occasional treat won’t hurt them, but
working yourself to a frazzle will surely hurt you. Rest.
She taught me that you must allow yourself time to find stillness and so
you can be moved by it. Sometimes we are so busy that we forget why
we’re busy. We have so many things on our list of priorities that we
lose sight of what’s really important.
And she taught me that my children are not truly mine. They don’t belong
to me; they’ve simply been entrusted to me. They are a gift life gave
to me, but one that I must one day give back to life. They must grow up
and go away and that is as it should be.
But as the time with my children in my home draws to a close — my oldest
is away at college and my twins are 16-year-old high school juniors —
I’m beginning to feel the pains in my chest that all parents feel when
their children move away.
I thought that this would be a celebratory time, a time when I would
relish the idea of getting back to me, of working late without worry and
taking last-minute weekend jaunts.
But I don’t. Letting go is hard for me to do. I must let go, but my heart feels hollow. I can’t imagine me without them.
Lately there are times that I find myself just staring at my children,
that kind of look that says, “I see you, really see you, and I love you
with an all-consuming love, the kind of love that envelops you and
sustains me.” It’s the kind of look that invariably draws from my
children a “What? What are you looking at?” They speak the words through
the slightest smile, a barely registered one, the kind of smile a
teenager manages when they know that they are loved, but feel that they
are too old for hugs or tears.
Life gave them to me. I’m preparing myself, as best I can, to give them back to life.
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