As a very shy little girl growing up in the 1960’s, I was fairly in awe of my mom and dad. They made me feel safe, even when just going to grade school felt like the most monumental feat. I doubted myself constantly. That I could fit in with the kids in my own grade, that I could handle the various studies at each level — being left-handed and therefore a true oddball to the Sisters who taught me back then sure didn’t help — that I could be successful following in just a micro step of the full and flourishing footsteps my older sister was conquering without the blink of an eye. It’s funny, though, how shyness doesn’t equate with not having a lot to say, that isn’t the case at all. I had lots of things on my mind back then, but lacked the belief that I was strong or smart enough to say them to anyone who didn’t also occupy a space alongside me in my brain. Because I was so unsure of myself I pretended to be sick a lot, so that I could stay in the safety zone…at home with my mom. I don’t think she appreciated that a good part of the time, she was a busy mom who of course had things to do and places to go, and having me at home certainly put a crimp in her plans. But for the most part she made the best of it, and I was so happy to be home with her, where I didn’t have to feel foolish if I said something a teacher or one of my peers might think was, well…dumb. But I also know that my mother didn’t really know how to figure out this “I’d rather stay at home” girl I was then. Especially when her eldest daughter couldn’t wait to get to school each day, excelled in every class and was a born leader ready to take charge in everything that came her way. I don’t think I was expected to completely follow suit. But to be the complete opposite of who they had come to know the first time around was still a surprise, and a concern. I can’t blame them. Quiet and anxious as I was, it all still posed a problem for them. How to get me to go to school, stay in school, and learn how to actually thrive there. My father, being a dad of the 60’s where men still closely followed the Father Knows Best of the 50’s, tried so hard to figure me out. Should he be patient, wait it out and see if my growing pains eventually eased into issues I could fix myself? Or should he take the bull by the horns and do the horrifically difficult job as a parent and force me to go to school on a day it was so clear I had no intention of going. He tried very hard for a long time with the first concept, because he had felt similar about school himself as a young boy, and could adapt my feelings to those he had himself, once upon a time. I didn’t know he had also faked illness as a kid to get out of going to school, and only learned as an adult that this particular DNA trait of his landed squarely and unhappily within me. Wise man that he was, he never divulged that information to me then, or it seems likely I would never have graduated from grammar school. In the end, he finally had to break his own heart as well as mine, and pull those bulls’ horns. I cried one morning as he lovingly but firmly (yes, you can actually achieve both at the same time) put me in the car, steeled himself as he quietly drove me to school…with me begging him between sobs to please let me stay home…and then, also quietly, said to me when we were there, “Either you can walk into school crying and looking silly, or you can dry your eyes and start your day.” I knew there was no going back home. I also knew, somewhere in the depths of me that was completely bummed he was right, that not looking the fool I already felt myself to be was the right thing, the only thing, to do. It was hard for me. I know now, because I am a parent, that it was probably even harder for him. He had to let my feet face the fire, and if it burned a little, or even a lot, it was still going to teach me in that difficult moment to be the person I am today, the person he so hoped for, and helped me, to be. Someone who can meet a challenge, as scary or difficult or heartbreaking as it may be, and see it through.
I loved my mother and looked to her for consolation and comfort throughout my childhood, and as I eased into womanhood. But I realize now, as a woman in her 60’s, that it was my amazing father who was the one who really “got me.” That’s what unconditional love can do, especially from parent to child, no matter how old that child gets. It gets sticky, though, because it can hurt so much when your older children sometimes make you feel that their own love comes with loads of conditions that make you wonder if they’ve missed what you’ve been working so hard to show them all along. I tremendously loved and respected my dad, and he knew that fact. But I still to this day so dearly wish I had not occasionally questioned his own for me when we, as normal kids and parents will do, butted heads. Do our own kids have to wait until we’re gone to understand that about us, or is there a way to make sure they know it now?
Do we parent our children the way we were parented, or wish we had been parented? I learned love from both my parents. But it is from my father that I learned the hard truth, and it can be, at times, excruciatingly hard, of what unconditional love really encompasses. Because he chose to put himself in my shoes, my brain, my anxieties — though they had, for the most part, been very different from his own — he also put himself in my heart, chose to understand me, warts and all, and loved me for who he knew, deep down, I truly was. He was firm but unfailingly kind. He encouraged, supported, sympathized and championed me in every way I could have possibly wanted and expected from a father, and never let me down.
I have triumphed many times as a mother, and I have also miserably failed too many times than I am happy with. But because I had a father who knew that parenting without unconditional love was not an option for him, it became something just as important and vital to me as I saw my children through childhood, and seek now, even as they are grown and gone, to let them know is still as deeply rooted as ever. At times they may think they don’t need it in the same way as when they were young. And it can be a real challenge for us, as well, to hold onto it as dearly as we do when they test us. But when we do meet the challenge, winning it goes such a long way in making all the difference.
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