In general I find the “Days” that cycle through the calendar to be overwrought, commercialized, too much but not enough. Along with occasions for commerce and brunch, they seem to be occasions for disappointment. If you love someone, nothing you do on Valentine’s Day will ever be commensurate with that love. Likewise, if you appreciate your mother or your father, no amount of cards ever does them justice. Perhaps the notion of doing justice, that kind of rigorous accounting, is a foolish idea. I shouldn’t be so literal. It’s the gesture that’s important. It’s a synecdoche for all that gratitude, a gesture toward their storm of support and devotion, roiling constantly over the plains.
For the record, I do still give and receive cards and flowers, etc. I am not that much of a bummer. I’m just working through some ideas.
Parenthood is one of those totalizing experiences that’s hard to appreciate until you’ve entered it, and even then it’s mystifying. All my pre-parenthood thoughts on what it must be like seem inadequate for the actual lived experience, its mixture of obligation and emotion. The grip and slog of it, Raymond Carver called it. “Slog” is a little harsh and doesn’t apply universally, except for perhaps daily school lunch prep. I imagine that parenthood is like war; you don’t know what it’s like, and how you’ll handle it, until you’re actually in it. I say this as someone who has never served in war, would likely draft dodge as fast as humanly possible, and failing this, get shot within a half an hour of combat. Welcome home, kids!
There are two pertinent parenthood related statements that I think are useful to keep in mind. The first is from Jenny Holzer’s Truisms series, here rendered in project-appropriate all caps:
FATHERS OFTEN USE TOO MUCH FORCE
I didn’t read this statement until I was already a father of several years, and I was chastened. It’s one of those statements I’ve thought of Sharpieing onto my forearm for daily reference.
My internet friend Tom MacWright has created a site where you can download these Truisms to use as iPhone backgrounds. Plus, it’s a great resource to scroll through Holzer’s series of provocative statements.
The second statement was something I overheard. I don’t remember the source. “What all parents want for their children is safety and happiness — in that order.”
I repeat this to my children often. I don’t mean to imply that all parent/child conflict springs from this chronology, but it’s surely the source of most of it.
Finally, you’re a parent every day. It’s nice to have a day of rest and relaxation, of communal appreciation, but the condition is permanent. There are no days off. That’s what makes it so difficult, so different. What constitutes actual good parenting or bad parenting is too diffuse and complicated to think about here, and besides, everyone’s family is different. What strikes some people as charmingly eccentric might strike me as threateningly unstable. In between the peaks and valleys, the manias and doldrums, is the glue of the mundane, footsteps through the hall, how one comes into the house after work, the emotional temperature of the soccer commute, humming in the kitchen, the homework of domesticity. Like glue, it’s invisible when dry, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, holding everything together. I feel — at least today I feel — that this glue is what truly defines parenthood, in both directions, coming and going.
That’s the other bit about becoming a parent: you step into the river.
Are these statements a kind of advice? I’m afraid so. I am a father after all. If you talk with me long enough, even if you’re a grown-up stranger, I’ll nudge a plate of vegetables in your direction and check the reliability of your seatbelt. See, once you cross over, there’s no going back.