Children don’t come with instructions. Out of that need, there are many books written to help smooth the paths of new parents. Dr. Spock was my bible for both of my children. I think I still have my tattered paperback copy somewhere. Dr. Spock had no cache with my children as they raised their offspring. My references, supported by the good doctor’s advice, were greeted with a modicum of polite disdain if not outright challenges. After all, times change.
But do they?
A child is a lifetime’s responsibility, a commitment, a passion that unfolds in time and space. That’s true in the “then,” the “now” and in the future that lies beyond our grandchildren.
My son’s high school graduation gift was a hot air balloon ride, symbolic of the guiding mantra that I clung too as he grew: Children need roots and wings. We did the best we could in the roots part, the balloon ride was the wings.
We were beta parents, ecstatic and sleep deprived, we focused hard on doing what was right, teaching him by precept and example how to chose the good in life. For both of our offspring we entered into that parent-child compact that comes from that need to give them the right paths, or at least the way to determine those paths.
Children need rails to roll on, “holy” books to consult, trusted, safe people and places to go to when needed as well as the forthright desire to be whomever they want to be.
My children’s lives unfolded. They learned words – “Mama,” “Dada,” learned to button their clothes, to tie their shoes, to read, to drive a car. It was among the years of lullabies in a rocking chair, teacher’s conferences, soccer games, piano lessons, reading books out loud, sledding down the hill next to school, birthday parties, first communion and confirmation celebrations, untold hours of driving to friends’ houses, gallons of milk and chocolate puddings, soft summer nights at the lake, swim lessons, buying school clothes, sharing funny stories, preparing for the prom … on and on… we wove our lives as a family.
And then they were gone.
“Turn around and they’re two, turn around and they’re four, turn around and they are young women/men going out of the door”… full, we hope of themselves, leaving us bereft but knowing that is part of the job.
We are left with the bittersweet joy of our children and their children wrapped up on photos, old greeting cards, drawings and memories, assembled from the mountains of days that we shared together so that we could be apart, have substance in our minds and souls, with illustrations on widely-lined paper and written in shaky, hesitating little hands, held in ornaments they made for the Christmas tree and candle stands they made in shop classes.
We remember little hands holding ours, a closeness that can be more powerful than any other.
Voices changed, shoulders widened, curfews and fashion became spots of contention; friendships wide and strong and whole parts of their lives became separate … we surely knew this, but it came as a surprise.
They left as easily as we hoped, founded their own families, blessed us with the luxury of grandchildren, as precious to us as their parents but a part of a community of others, with hopes and plans separate from the lives we live. As our children have grown, so have we, or at least we have changed, accumulating the tarnish of aging, we move into another way of being family. Distances not only in miles but intimacy.
It goes so fast. The circle turns.
There are no guidebooks for this. I wish there were.
