On Parents

I’ve found that one of the most interesting things about becoming a parent is how connected it makes me feel to my own parents.  As I watch Lily move from room to room or race across the lawn, I find myself identifying with both my mother and my father, as I imagine that, at one point, they stood and watched me explore my world, and I wonder if they, in turn, thought about their own parents, if perhaps this is the way you live forever, in the eyes of your children watching their own children, a long chain of mothers and fathers connected through the practice of raising small children.  And I say practice here because I believe that caring for small children has a spiritual element to it, requiring mindfulness and kindness and endless amounts of patience, all of which seem to me to be, if not religious per se, at least what you would hope to see in a religion of any sort. 

So now, at least once a day, if not more, I find myself existing in this space, this in-between state of tied-to-the-moment and a more faded state of existing-in-the-past, where I’m watching Lily and I’m also watching myself and it feels like there are many other people in the room with me, my parents and their parents and their parents before them, all connected by the exhausting love we have for these small people we have the privilege to guide and care for, their endless needs teaching us about our ability to give more even when it seems like you’ve already given all you have, cracking our hearts open with the fierce love they inspire in us. 

And it’s always this that is so surprising to me, to realize that this is how much my parents loved me, that this soul-deep love I have for my daughter is what my mother and father felt as well.  I feel bound to my parents through this shared experience, tied into this web of love and fear and hope and sleepless nights and sunny mornings, of balancing dreams and expectations with the daily tasks of just placing one foot in front of the other.