A Word About My Kids

Feeling a bit under the weather today, an uncooperative constitution being the term one uses when one isn’t in the mood to share details. Suffice it to say that with discretion being the better part of valor and all, I thought it wise to skip my shift at Hope Thrift today. Now it suddenly looks dark and menacing outside adding to the general since of foreboding that fills my house whenever I am here alone. I have found that the older I get the less comfortable I am without Pam. We don’t even have to be in the same room. I can be upstairs engrossed in a baseball game while she sits downstairs on the sofa working on organizing something, but just knowing she’s down there comforts me.  A few minutes ago Bernadette and Issac came home from a day of chores, which helped, but its not the same as when the Queen returns.

Reading back over that paragraph caused me to laugh at myself a bit. What a freaking wuss I have become. I could have edited out the less than manly man parts but, it is what it is. She’s my girl, man.

I’ve been thinking about my kids over the past couple of days. Patrick and Sarah, down in Nashville, and Kaitlin and Jon in Columbia. I can no longer delude myself with the notion that they are anything other than fully grown adults doing grownup things. We want to hold on to our old familiar understanding of our kids, we parents, because its comforting. Things were in many ways easier when they were under our full time care. Now, we are largely powerless. Not that they are in dire need of our help, they are all handling the chaos and staggering confusion of 2020 like seasoned veterans. It’s just that sometimes it troubles me when I realize that I can no longer shield them from the cruelties of life. For one thing, they would resent my interference if I did but secondly...I’m not there. Everything would be easier if they lived closer...even 50 miles away. If one of them got sick and they only lived 50 lousy miles away, Pam would be there with a hot pot of chicken soup in a New York minute. But the paths of their lives have taken them to different places in different states for now. So we fret about them from long distance. 

Honestly, there’s not much to fret about. My kids are bright, inventive, hard working adults. Are they perfect? No, neither are we. Neither are you. But for us, they are as close to perfect as it is possible to get without becoming narcissistic bores. One thing I never get from any of them is whining, although every single one of them have had reason to whine over the past few years. They face whatever obstacle is in their way and cast about for a solution. If it doesn’t get solved right away they stay at it, grinding away. So much for the lie that Millennials are a bunch of entitled brats living in their parent’s basements. And its not just my kids. Most of the kids I consorted with back in my Youth group days (millennials all) have grown up to be hard working, big hearted adults who just have more tattoos and drink better beer than my generation ever did.

We disagree on stuff, me and my kids. They are wrong-headed on some things, but they have shown me that I’ve been wrong-headed on my share of stuff too. But, if they disagree with me it’s my own fault. I’m the one who taught them how to think, not to believe everything that every Tom, Dick and Harry says, to question big shots who are in charge...except for dad. They have done so in spades.