Chatterbox: Parenting up, down and always

Of late, we have been very overtaken by the social and political situations that have surrounded us for over six years.
Last week I wondered if it was still okay to enjoy anything. Now, I realize, we must. We can’t completely ignore what’s good about life just because it’s a rough sail. We must remain socially aware, but it’s always okay to chuckle a little - because becoming a hermit isn’t an option, especially if we are parents.
I had a long chat with my sister recently. We both have children and grandchildren. We each have one child who is, or was, a single parent with children. We commiserated about how hard our kids work, but raising children is the most difficult job, ever, on this planet. Doing it as a single parent requires effort doubled to the googolplex (that’s not a typo; it’s a number).
Teenagers are a whole other topic entirely, but we’ve talked a few times about some mechanics that help manage the hysteria of the process of living with school-agers. Parents must field all of the issues that come from the system itself and the responsibilities and participation therein, but we also have to handle the jobs that bounce from the kids to the parents. Kids are famous for remembering at midnight, that they need poster board. I used to keep a stash of poster board, markers and foam-core in the attic. It never failed that my child needed something outside of my cache’s contents.
We field schoolyard issues, missing mittens, forgotten lunches, last minute gifts, and “how could you possibly leave school in January without your coat … and it’s Friday!?” Late night runs to supermarkets for baby aspirin or cold medications, even trips to the emergency room become just another rodeo that isn’t our first.
We branch into more serious issues … autism, dyslexia, failing grades, what team they didn’t make, and leaving them at college, alone and on their own for the first time. If we’re lucky we’ll never know the pain of issues of insecurity, feel the bite of devastating bullying, or suffer the consequences of cyber-mistakes that can be of legal or life-threatening proportions.
Bette Davis is famous for saying, “Old age is no place for sissies.” Well, that is very true, but it pales in comparison to parenting. We face problems we can control and problems we have no power over. We manage small issues and handle crises that can truly have a negative, lifelong effect. We learn to do things we never wanted to, risk things one would only attempt on behalf of one’s child, and take on jobs we never did want – and still wouldn’t want if we had to do it again. Though all parents pull triple duty at double-time pace, it’s the parent who is at home, full time, who gets volunteered for everything.

I remember the day one of my daughters came home from school and said, “Hey, Mom, the high school needs a coach for the cheerleaders. I told them you could do it. If you don’t, they’re going to disband the team.” (That sound you hear is me slapping myself; obligations by day added up to decades – and they had better not leave one morsel out of my obituary.)
Parents become coaches, assemblers, detectives, cabbies and gum removal experts. We learn how to repair anything with a toothpick and twine, can find one missing Lego under a sofa without a flashlight, and are able to leap tall orders in a single bound. Though the demands diminish somewhat as we, and our children, grow older, we’re Superman and Wonder Woman.
During our phone call, my sister and I agreed it was hard, now, to watch our kids work so hard every day for their children. She’s the wise one; she said, “…but think what our mother would’ve said if she had seen what we were doing!” Voila, a whole new perspective.
My darling daughter-in-law (now fretting an empty nest) tells a great story. A very creative mother of dedication to no end, she home-schooled two seventh and eighth grade children who graduated high school with 4+ GPAs, great social skills, and are politically aware and socially compassionate. They’re healthy, family-loving kids. She tells how she phoned her father one day, sighed, and asked him, “How old will they be when they won’t need me anymore?”
Her dad, a great guy and wise father, simply responded, “You do realize you called me to answer that question, don’t you?”
‘Nuff said.

---

Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.