I can see right through you baby!

Parenting has been the most challenging task I have ever encountered. In contrast, high school was relatively easy and unchallenging, yet I do not believe that I was intellectually special in any way. If I studied I got good grades, if I didn't I failed like everybody else failed, so I studied. College was much more of a challenge even though to be fair I have to admit that personal and social preocupations occupied a lot of my time making it much harder than it really needed to be in the first place. Finally, after completing my college degree I instantly thrusted myself into the workforce as an engineer, and then again there was very little challenge involved in what seemed to be an extremely complicated arena until I started doing the job. Soon after I found myself completely unchallenged again and eager to learn more, so three years later I was already seeking new opportunities within the system. From learning everything I could possibly learn about missile guidance systems to understanding and evaluating the complexities of radar design and their testing, I found myself bringing into my office graduate school books on gravitation, quantum, particle, and astrophysics, and the likes just to be able to fill in the gaps of time that would of undoubtibly led to a horrible boredom which I feared would be noticable and get me in trouble at my job. Years went by, and although I moved a few more times within the system seeking to fill in the professional unchallenging gap in my life, I never did find what I was looking for and eventually just settled. Don't get me wrong, I like what I do and it has its rewards, but overall I feel I should be doing much more with my abilities.


In the background, my personal life was a much different story. As much of an impossibly boring career that I had thrusted my life into, with the same intensity I found it almost impossible to figure out what to do with my by then growing marital problems. Being a scientist at heart led me to believe that every problem in life had a solution if you worked on figuring out all of the parameters that had caused the problem to emerge in the first place. In my mind I had it all figured out, and I ignorantly went about living and thinking that sooner or later all the missing parts of my life's equation would reveal themselves and eventually an answer would emerge to make it all better. Little did I know at the time that no matter how much effort I placed into trying to fix my marriage, the only part of it that I actually had any kind of true influence on was my side of the marital equation. Even if I worked hard enough to resolve my end of the problems, that could only account for 50% of the success, leaving the other 50% completely out of my hands. This is not to say that I was ever able to fix all of my own deficits, that would be very much an overstatement, but at least I was always willing to try, and try I did for years on end until one day I lifted up my arms and gave up. After the fact I can now safely say that I did give it a very good effort, I honestly did do my best, but what I did not do was find it in myself to keep going after 18 and a half years. In fact, I can clearly remember the exact moment when I gave up, when in my heart I lost total faith that it would ever get better. Interesting use of the word "faith" which until recently I thought it was an exclusive emotion reserved between me and my God. But not really, looking back at my life I can actually recognize many times in which I placed my faith in many other less divine personas. I had never been a quitter in my life and the act of losing faith that I could, she could, or we could fix our marriage was an inmense slap to my face and ego. I truly believe that if I would of put my faith in God's ability to fix our marriage, maybe then, and only then we could of survived our unique circumstances. Water under the bridge, life goes one, and I honestly do not have any regrets at this stage of my life.


I digress, now back to parenting. The challenges have been inmensly difficult to overcome, and if it were not because I have two boys to be able to compare incredibly different personalities and behavior, I would measure my achievment level with my older son as a total failure. I am probably not telling you anything you have not either heard before from other parents, or experienced yourself in the parenting of your own children. What I find rather unique to my personal circumstances is to the extent and degree in which I have changed as a parent myself in order to cope with my daily ups and downs as a father. I am definitely better equipped to handle all the extreemes in behavior today, than I was as a younger parent. One thing that I have found to help me a lot is to not be clouded by the image that my son portrays himself as a teenager. The long hair, the silly hats, the dark coats and sunglasses, all seem to be more like stage props than anything else. I actually find a lot of it to be very funny since one day he might be wearing a top hat, while the next day the boy is wearing a captain's or pilot's hat. I am pretty sure that I can probably count over a dozen different disguises, including his famous blue bath robe, which he managed to go to school in several times when I was out of town. I can tell that he is dead set in making sure that he is unique, different, and special to anyone that sees him. But don't get me wrong, these props are not always for the benefit of others since it has been plenty of times that I have seen him all alone at home wearing his cowboy hat, dark sunglasses, and any other one of his costumes while sitting all alone in the family room playing his guitar and singing his heart out. To the untrained eye the first impression would be that he is seeking my or someone else attention, but after you've experienced this kind of behavior for the last four to five years I can safely say that he could care less what anyone else thinks when he dresses up like this or any other way. I am totally immune to what might seem as his multiple personalities, mostly because I can see right through it all and still identify him beneath it all. I find it useful to sometimes just pull out one of his childhood pictures and look into his eyes and compare. Inside this almost 18 year old young man is still the same little boy that has always been, and even though he thinks he can hide, I can clearly see right through him.

Consider this, think about your own person, your childhood, your youth, your entire life. How different are you really from who you were when you were much younger? It is true that we all hope to have matured and grown some common sense by the time we have teenage kids in our lives. However, do you really feel the age that image in the mirror reflects back into your eyes? There is no way that I should have so much white hair! In my mind I feel at least half my age even if my body and all of it's pains tell me a much different story. So maybe this is why our kids will always be our kids no matter how old they become. I know that I almost always give my mom a heart attack every time I go visit and she has to face the realization that this middle aged man was once her little boy. But it does not take her long, after just a bit of conversation, a little sharing, and soon she too sees right past my outer shell and finds her once young son all over again. That is exactly what I see every time I spend any significant amount of time glancing at my boys. In less that just a few minutes all I can see is the two little rascals that would be driving me crazy asking me to play with them all the time. Daddy this, daddy that...buy me this, buy me that...really, not that much as changed. I just wished I could still hold them up in my arms cheek to cheek while they straddled their legs around my waist and their little arms around my neck...damn, that felt good!

Dad