daddyville

The joys of parenting, for me, are in the small things: a look, a gesture, an unbidden "I love you Daddy", a pouncing into my lap with a big smile and a generous, strong, energetic hug. It's these things that make it amazing for me. They make me smile outwardly and bring the welling of joy in the form of burgeoning tears which you could see in these moments if you beheld me askance from a distance removed.
The conversation, as the depth and expanse of that conversation grows as the days grow long, fuels a growing repertoire of the same common subjects and more, however growing in the hues, shades and textures associated with a developing person--an expanding mind and awareness. These gems and innumerable others pepper the landscape that is my World.

God Bless The Children and
All Who've Chosen to Raise Them.

It's funny. He said "No" at first, but now he's totally into checking out how they're constructed.

The title of this is a sentiment that I repeat often to myself everyday. Of all the things that I have found most prominent for me to work on as a father, this one is at the top of the list and the most pertinent.

Patience is something that we all have the need to have in life, and yet there is never (in my mind) such a pressing need for it as when you are a parent, and coincidentally the place where it's absence will leave the starkest of voids. If it is not there in adequate supply, frustration and irritation will take it's place leaving your child to perhaps feel as if they are or have done something unacceptable.
This, for me, is a great concern, because of all things possible it is my intent to leave my child with the cleanest of impressions about themselves. These little people take so many things to heart and they cannot differentiate between our frustration with a situation and our feelings about them. Everything is personal. This, to me, is one of the biggest challenges of parenthood thus far. The learning curve for this is very steep, and it's difficulty is compounded when we are talking about a parent to child relationship. That relationship is complex and multi-faceted. We must work on ourselves, and at the same time work on ourselves in such a way as to consider how all this might appear to one who doesn't know any better, and is more susceptible to misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Also, the fallback interpretation of a child lands on them believing that they are somehow inadequate and have 'caused' the frustration in the firstplace, which in keeping things clear and accurate, is literally on the 'other side of the world' from the truth. The truth is that Mommy and/or Daddy are not finished 'growing up' and have a lot of work to do on themselves. How can you impart that to a pre-schooler?? You can't. You just have to get your act together.

Are we ever finished learning about patience? Obviously not, and if you have a child (or children) your answer, having seen that aspect of life, sounds more like "Hell no" or "Never" because with this experience you see that it is never done. Life becomes more 'circular' than ever before. You never really thought it was a straight line, but through the act of raising another human being you see, as you have never seen before, that life is a kind of spiraling process that leads you through phases and changes, and that yes, you have to have patience with your own lack of patience and your learning process in that, and that hopefully, by the grace of God, all things will turn out well in the end because for the first time in your life, you realize, how imperfect you truly are.

There are times for me during this parenting process when I feel like my job is just to repeat instructional phrases, and while that is just a part of the process at this stage of the game it is a large part of that process. "Do this, Oh don't do that, wash your hands first, be sure to wipe well, please take your shoes into your room and put then in their 'home place', please watch out sweetheart that's hot, please be careful with that it's breakable", I say along with many other things. Parents, do you remember these times? Single people or kidless ones, you haven't had the pleasure? Well, if you do at some point in the future then you will know the joy and the craziness of which I speak. Our little girl is four years old and while they are some really cute, beautiful and innocent years there are moments, a fair amount of them actually, when I say to myself that I really am ready for the time line to go ahead and move along. Yes, I may miss them later, and that will perhaps be the case regardless. There are days when your patience gets pushed to limits that you didn't know that you had. There are no 'days off' on this kind of thing. Your patience gets tried every single day. Some days are easier than others and for those you are eternally thankful, and yet when you look at how exasperated you become at times and how easily that all takes place, and how quickly...You wonder how you ever made it this far. Day by day; that's how we make it....day by day. In these times I look at myself in the stark truth of a challenging reality and I see what a kid, a child I have been in the majority of my adult years, I am humbled. For this I am grateful lest I get the wrong idea about myself or about others undergoing the same processes that in the past I have been quick to presuppose or judge. Being a parent certainly gives you a fresh, informed pair of eyes through which to view your own parents and upbringing. All of a sudden an unvarnished respect and compassion abounds. All of this time you thought that you were smart, and now you've earned a little of your own--smarts---and if you're careful, it may even grow.

Grace is a vital element in surviving the ups and downs of life. Parenting is no exception to this. Grace for yourself and grace for others: grace all around. I have to remind myself of this when the process of parenting presents personal challenges that cause me to see parts of myself that I really need to work on. These are parts of myself that nothing else in life before now has successfully reached on any kind of consistent basis. Parenting does. Full stop; parenting takes the bait. I am happy to be a parent, and yet it is the hardest thing that I have ever done. I love it dearly, and yet it pushes me into territories of painful growth and stretching inside myself. How could I love something so intensely demanding? Because the sum of that is a little person and they are part of me; they came from me. This process is biological in it's origin and in that way bypasses much of the mental stipulations governing most rational involvements in physical affairs. The family unit is a Universe unto itself and yet it cannot help but be the cornerstone of so many other systems that we know of both physical and non-physical. Perhaps that is one of the facets of the perfection that it holds. Maybe that is part of the mystery that it embodies. Because there most certainly is a mystery about it and in it's processes. It's one of great love and great growth: challenge and beauty, strength and vulnerability, assertion and reception, firmness and malleability.....and all of it hand in hand, side by side. There's a resonance of perfection there that I think is shared in the bedrock of all the most worthwhile things in life.

The marvel about this mystery is that it is masked by it's own self, clothed by the common tasks that you perform everyday, quietly working on who and what you are through subtleties of it's own until later on down the road you look back at the self that you once were through the eyes of the self that you are and it is then that you realize the change that you Are: The Change that you have been Living. You are that change and it has been on you and in you and through you all the while, working it's magic, fueled by the ember of love inside you.
What can be said of this? Sure, there are moments when you feel like you really wish yourself more of a saint than that which you are, but that which you are--the parent that you are --must be loved and nurtured and given the room to grow and to learn just like the precious children you raise. I think that it is in 'the doing' that we learn how to be the best parents that we can be. We are, we learn, we adapt, we are, we learn, we adapt. We feel it out, step by baby step walking In the half light, sometimes sorry for ourselves, sometimes proud of responding well to challenge. We are happy, we are sad, we laugh, we cry, we're stupefied and dumbfounded, we're amazed and radiant...... All in their Time. But the whole while we are walking down the hall in our sock feet looking for the closest light switch to turn on the knowledge, carrying that ember of love in the center of our chests with the seeds of hope firmly clenched in our palms and with the soft sing-song Prayers of Grace swirling off our lips.

Who are these people??
They are parents.

Isn't it great (not!) when your 4y.o. speaks in riddles? Our's does it All the time, out of the blue. They're 1/2 completed thoughts like "I'm going to keep my socks on" and you're like "what?" because it makes no contextual sense. She's on her way to a public bathroom or something like that and it's certainly not like we take our shoes off to pee or anything of the sort. Also, it's not for a lack of q&a sessions that she does this! Oh no, for sure not. Talking is her Well, I mean WELL practiced hobby and past time. Quiet comes at night, and that's it. The day time is anything but. Got to love it.