Parents, and parent-like people and places

Part 1

 

I would never tell my mother, but my father has always been my favourite parent.  Partly, unjustly, since I saw my mother all the time (since she was a stay-at-home mom) but also because I have more in common with my father than my mother, a love for reading, going for walks, and reaching for academic fulfillment and success.  At the same time, it has always been my parents, together, that have given me balance in parenting.  I can talk to my father about more intellectual/philosophical things.  But my mother is generally more cheerful and social.  To this day, I prefer to have them both on the line when I talk to them on the phone.

 

Last Sunday, on Father’s Day, I ended up spending the Day in the ER with my father.  For my father, this time, not for me.  We were supposed to go to Merrickville that day to celebrate Father’s Day.  But a few days before, my father had said he would prefer if we just went over to their house for dinner instead.  On Sunday morning, my father called and said he had hurt his leg a little.  It turned out that he had not been able to walk in days.  It surprised me that my mother hadn’t insisted that he go to the hospital, as she is generally wont to do, but there was a logistical problem in getting my father to the hospital, given that he couldn’t walk.  An ambulance was an option they were keeping in the backs of their head. 

 

My tolerance for uncertainty has not increased, so I insisted they go to the hospital right away.  Jaime was able to skillfully manoeuvre my father into our car and get him settled into a wheelchair in the hospital.  Several hours later, an ER doctor decided that it was a muscular pain (possibly a torn ligament), gave him some painkillers and a cane and sent him home.  I felt unsatisfied, because they didn’t do any tests to confirm that the issue was muscular, and they didn’t provide anything really helpful, given that he couldn't walk.

 

I was unable to sleep that night.  I kept thinking that if my poor, beloved dad woke up in the middle of the night, he would not be able to just get up and go to the bathroom or get a drink of water.  As if to compensate, I kept getting up.  I thought how awful it was that your life can change just like that – even if it just just temporarily.  That, one day, you can wake up and you can’t walk, or you have a broken wrist or you are sick – and your life changes.  It seems like everything can change in a day. 

 

And I wondered if the opposite is possible, whether it is possible for your life to suddenly take a turn towards the wonderful.  I couldn’t think of when that happened to me.  I asked Jaime, who doesn’t have this cloud hanging over him the way I seem to lately, and he said that, aside from maybe winning the lottery, your life can’t just change for the better in a minute.  Anything you do to make your life better, like getting a better job or achieving better health, happens over time and takes a lot of hard work.

 

It brings me back to something my father used to say about friendships, that good and true friendships take a long time to build, but they can be destroyed in a minute, with a betrayal or a few harsh words.  Just like a ceramic or a beautiful flower – anything good takes effort and a long time to blossom but can be broken with no effort in no time at all.

 

My dad was right.  And though his summer has been changed in the blink of an eye, I hope that with time and nurturing, good things will happen and he will be walking again.

 

Part 2

 

I tell my kids that they can tell me or talk to me or ask me about anything.  Boys (or girls, whatever the case might be), friend troubles, school troubles, questions about drugs and puberty and science and skin care.  I want, more than anything, to be the trusted adult in their lives.   

But over the last couple of years, I have also tried to teach them that I am not the only trusted adult in their lives.  Of course, they have their father.  But they also have access to so many other adults that they should feel they can turn to – teachers, parents of their friends, coaches.  As I faced my mortality, I really wanted them to know that they would have many more people to take care of them than just me.  I even gave up my prized position of being “favourite parent” over to Jaime.  They used to love me more.  But now they love Jaime more.  And I did that consciously, for them.  That hurt me to do, but it also makes me feel better that if anything should happen to me, they will be all right.  And, in any case, the more people in their lives, the better their lives will be.

 

I know this, because I have had many people in my life that were not my parents, but parent-like.  Mostly they were teachers.  Sister Murphy, Ms. Pronowitz, Mr. Kyte.  They were all really wonderful teachers who saw something special in me and cared about me and were influential in shaping my life – my love of writing, my extra-curricular activities, my eventual study of economics.  When I started working, I had bosses like that too.  Bosses that became parent-like to me.  To this day, those relationships have sustained me and helped me get through the most difficult periods of my life, with complete selflessness and generosity. 

 

This week, I felt sad, saying good-bye to one of those people in my life.  At the same time that I had to start more of a caregiver role to my father for the first time.  I know that I should be a grown-up now and not need parents and parent-like figures in my life.  I should be one.  I am one.  And, yet, I feel sad and vulnerable and inadequate.  Though I know that I am strong, resilient and up to the job.  I know, because all these people in my life have nurtured and taken care of me, taught me and shown me about studies and work and life, and, most of all, to stand on my own two feet.  I have to be able to show them that I can do it, that they haven’t wasted their time.

 

There are parent-like places too.  Schools, jobs, places that grow you up.  As I stood in one such place yesterday, listening to speeches at the farewell reception of a colleague at my former workplace, I was flooded with a rush of emotions.  I had worked at this place for 15 years, and I had spectacular ups and downs there.  And all those ups and downs came to me, like water unleashed from a dam.  I was conflicted, and just wanted to go back to my new job, which is a bit boring right now, but is steady and even-keeled and in many ways, more grown up.  I was in my old job for so long.  I grew up in that job.  In my new job, I don’t have parent- or mentor-like bosses.  My bosses are now younger than me.  And getting younger by the minute.  It doesn’t matter what my position or job title is, I am the adult in my new job. 

 

Next week, I will attend my son’s school-leaving ceremony.  After 8 years, he will be finished elementary school, and moving on to middle school.  There will be no more supervised walk-overs or after-care programs.  He will leave the relatively safe confines of the Glebe, where trusted teachers and parents of friends are everywhere.  He will be crossing the boundary into centre-town to go to middle school there.  At times, he will be able to walk with friends.  But there will be times when he will be by himself.  And he will have to rely on his judgement and good sense and everything we have, as parents, and as a community, taught him about traffic-safety and stranger-safety.  He will have to stand, as I have to, on his own two feet.

 

And, finally

 

If life came with a sound track, this would be the song of the moment:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFrsT9sc_B0