Above all, your real job is to never give up!

It takes being a parent to totally grasp what parenting is all about.  In fact, I have learned that one has to be at this selfless job for more than just a few years to totally come to grips with how incredibly ignorant we were about parenting in the first place.  To those who play golf I would give them the analogy of how simple the game seemed before they ever played a game.  Come on, how hard could it be to hit a little ball down a beautiful green field and put it into a hole?  In fact, the first time anyone plays golf they are typically amazed at how quickly they can learn to hit the ball straight with just a few tips from a friend.  But then they go and invest in a set of golf clubs, some dorky looking shoes, maybe even take a few lessons, and when they return to play the game truly thinking that they will be so much better at it, they find themselves losing more balls than they did when they knew absolutely nothing about golf in the first place.  Funny how that goes, the more you practice, the harder the game becomes even if you get better at it.  Well, that is a bit like what parenting is in real life.  The longer we are parents, the harder the job becomes and then we realize how simpler it was in the beginning.  This is why we find so many grandparents telling their children how important it is for them to enjoy their kids while they are little.  Grandparents also tend to give the advice to younger parents to not be so hard on our kids when they are young, knowing well that in time there will be plenty of things for the parents to take immensely seriously when they grow older.  My mother's youngest brother and parent of two boys, one of my uncles, has told me many times that "as your kids get older, the problems always get larger, prepare yourself..." as a warning of things to come.  Even though I tend to agree with my dear uncle, I also believe that you should not live life waiting for the dark moments.  Since dark moments have a way of showing up uninvited regardless, I am one to try to keep a more positive perspective and not be the one that triggers their invitation in the first place.  I rather deal with those moments as they show up, than live my life waiting in fear for them to reveal themselves.

All this been said though, I barely have any time to spend second guessing myself with regards to the decisions I have made parenting my children.  I believe that this is the same for other parents too.  From the moment we bring home our little bundles of joy, until the day they flee the nest to begin their independent lives, we as parents invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and not to mention money taking in our new roles as caretakers, enforcers, guides, and counselors.  Very few times during those irreversible years do we ever have an opportunity to once again breath the air of peace and solitude that we once so easily took for granted and later were so eager to give up in exchange of having children.  In fact, at every stage of their lives we seem to live as if constantly throwing pennies into a wishing well hoping that what is next to come will be somewhat better than the days we just went through.  Maybe when he is potty trained things will be so much easier than constantly cleaning his poopy butt.  Maybe when he starts to talk I'll be able to tell what it is that he cries so much about.  Maybe when he is finally in school, all the pre-school nonsense and headaches will go away.  Maybe when he finally has some real friends it will be easier to get him involved in some sports or special activities.  I bet that as soon as he starts liking girls he'll begin brushing his teeth and wearing deodorant without me having to tell him to do so every morning.  Our fantasies go on and on with respect to how we visualize improvement in the future without realizing that at every stage a new and more difficult challenge creeps up its head to make the past look trivial in retrospect.  Oh how I wish that my biggest problem would be the burden of having to buy diapers by the truck load!  It is no wonder that so many mothers become depressed soon after giving birth to a child.  Not only do their environmental, physiological, and emotional worlds change without warning, but to top it off they are no longer just responsible for their singular life, but also the entire life of the new born creature.  It must feel as if at every corner someone is judging their ability to be a good mother, while at the same time almost no one is willing to do anything to lessen the weight of it all.

You will almost never find a parent referring to caring for their children as it being a burden.  Rarely will you hear those words reveal themselves from the lips of a mother or father that loves their kids.  Yet deep inside we all know that there are very few words to describe the enormous amount of responsibility and hard work that it takes to be a good parent.  The job is without a doubt the hardest task anyone will ever have to complete without a good set of instructions or procedures manual.  I might sound cold and harsh by talking about raising children in these terms.  However, all it takes is to be a parent for a few years to realize that there are very few other ways to describe the weight that is brought upon caring for a child, let alone more than one at a time.  Top it off with the fact that in most circumstances being a good parent also means being the bad guy, and soon you come to realize how great your own parents were in the first place.

I write this post today to give you a rare opportunity to reconsider some of the judgements that you might of made towards your own parents in the past.  Most of the time we are so self involved in our personal lives that we rarely take a moment to go back in time and understand the reason, the circumstances, and much less the reality under which our own parents behaved and acted under certain circumstances towards us as parents.  It seems so much easier to criticize their actions and decisions that it is to truly understand their reasons and motives.  I for one feel blessed for having such dedicated parents that cared enough to give it their all in order to be good parents.  What they did right or what they did wrong truly matters very little in comparison with what they accomplished in the end.  If you are reading this post chances are that you learned enough to recognize that in order for you to be a good parent, you must listen to others, learn from others, and most of all understand that nobody is perfect as a parent.  In fact, in my humble opinion, if you feel that you are a perfect parent, then you are well on your way to being a terrible parent in the end.  Nothing screams louder "bad parenting" than an individual that thinks that they know it all, and that the only right answer is "their answer".  I believe that the most important rule in good parenting is recognizing that we all make mistakes and that sometimes we need to make amends with what we've done wrong in the past in order to get it right in the present.

I can without a shadow of a doubt tell you that if you care enough to take the time to learn from your mistakes that sooner or later you will be well on your way to becoming a good parent.  The trick is to never let it all go to your head.  Don't ever make the mistake to think that you already know everything you need to know to be a good parent.  As long as you keep the door open to allow yourself to continue to learn, chances are that you are on the right track.  Even when you think that you have nothing else to give or nothing else to learn that might change your immediate circumstances, you cannot give in to failure.  The truth is that behind every failure there is a lesson that guides your steps towards eventual success.  If you keep learning, sooner or later you will succeed.  Above all, your real job is to never give up!

Dad

You can teach an old dog new tricks!

My mom keeps reminding me to buy her one of those cat scratch pads or posts.  Somehow I just keep forgetting every time I am out doing any shopping.  Probably because my head is full of other stuff and the needs of this fuzzy friend just rank one notch below the available "Post-It" space in my brain.  A bit over two years ago one of my son's was walking back from school when this little ball of joy that could not weigh more than a pound followed him home.  We spent several afternoons unsuccessfully canvasing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, hoping that we could find the original home and owners to the almost instantly named "Seaham" kitty.  You know you are in trouble once your kids name the creature.  It is almost like the first step in an emotional adoption process.  I myself am totally a dog person, so as adorable as it might as seemed at the moment, all I could think of was finding the animal it's real owners.  Eventually we gave up after in more than one occasion somebody told us that they thought the little thing was left behind by a individual that had lost their home to a foreclosure.  All I could think of at the moment was "I hope this cat is not as much trouble as the one I had for a short while in college!"  Her name was Baby Jane, and she was more than a handful!

Immediately I scheduled the earliest appointment to have her spayed, which was at least four months down the road.  The procedure could not have been more timely, since just a few weeks prior, our back yard had already become the main center of attraction for some very scary big fat black cat that had it in his mind to become a daddy if our adorable Seaham would let him.  You could almost see it in her tiny little face how scared she was of the impending prospect of the bad kitty mounting her!  I bought her a litter box and tried to keep her indoors as much as possible until the date of her operation, which soon turned several sections of my almost new home carpet into a scratch pad, hence my mother's advice to buy the creature the cat version to keep her from doing more damage.  It always amazes me how much can go wrong in such a short amount of time when you are caring for kitties and puppies.  I have seen these little troublemakers eat shoes, remote controls, couches, cabinets, and even outdoor sprinkler systems in a backyard.  There is no end to how much chaos they can cause when left to their own supervision.

I have been pleasantly surprised with how much my two sons have bonded with Seaham.  Interestingly, soon after she became a part of our household, the boys nicknamed her Sam, which in my opinion, shorter is better when naming pets.  In the last two years she has become what I call "a very grateful cat."  She never hisses at any of us, spends most of her day in the backyard chasing bugs, lizards, mice, and the occasional bird, which she typically brings some body part to us as gifts of appreciation for our attention and caring of her.  She'll drop to the floor on her side instantly if she thinks that we are going to pet her, exposing her furry belly and allowing us to scratch her as if she was a dog.  I had never experienced this kind of behavior with a cat, then again, I only had a cat for a few months before her.  Still, the scratching on stuff can be very annoying, so every time she starts I usually yell "no!" and take her outside.  Interestingly, she has taken to understand that if she scratches on something that I will then open the door.  So now days, all she does when she wants to go outside is make the gesture that she is about to start scratching on our recliner in the family room and then immediately she looks towards the door expecting one of us to open it for her.  In other words, the cat has trained "us" to know what to do when she wants out!

Sam is now 90% an outdoor cat.  As soon as she sees me doing any dishes in the morning through the window just above the kitchen sink, she then rushes to the sliding door just a few feet away expecting her well trained grandpa to open the door so she can come in and eat her food.  A few minutes later she'll just lift her paw against the corner of the family room recliner and look at the sliding door again, expecting the old man to once again let her out.  This process is basically a daily ritual which in her mind probably keeps me trained to know how to take good care of her.  In return she will occasionally bring me the severed head of a bird or reptile and leave it in front of the door to reward me for my good behavior.  I can almost hear what she is thinking..."good boy...good boy!"  What can I say other than you can teach an old dog new tricks!

Dad

The gift of hope.

As I entered his office I noticed a picture of a beautiful Gretsch White Falcon electric guitar on the top portion of his wall calendar.  I have always had a secret fascination with musical instruments which typically forces me to hold on to music store catalogs that come in the mail until I have had an opportunity to calmly drool over its pages before I am able to throw them in the trash.  I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind I must be a musician at heart.  At the age of 7 I started taking piano lessons after one of my sisters received a console piano as a Christmas present from Santa Claus.  For almost 10 years I continued taking lessons until one day my teenage interests switched to other age appropriate things and I was able to convince my mom that I needed a break.  Still, for years to come, as soon as I walked into a room with a piano my mind wandered to the ivory keys with a sudden rush inside me driving me to want to play again.  The drive has always been strong, so much that while I went to college in Mississippi I remember sneaking into an empty large room in the Student Union building and sitting before a beautiful grand piano and trying to play from memory some of my favorite George Winston's compositions.  Other times I would walk into the Music building and wait until a music student would be leaving from one of the small practice rooms to reach for the door before it would lock itself behind him or her so that I could sneak in and play a little.  As an adult I have learned to hold back my impulses, so now days when I walk into a room that has a piano I just look and almost never touch.  However, I am sure that if at that very moment I was hooked up to some anxiety meter the needle would probably tilt off scale since my heart rate and many more of my vital signs are obviously affected by this sudden internal rush.

"Wow, that is a beautiful guitar" I told my co-worker and friend as I stared at the image on the wall.  He then proceeded with a chuckle and a comment on how expensive and desirable that particular instrument was to many people.  One thing led to another and in less than two minutes I was sharing with him how proud I was that my oldest son had learned to play guitar on his own so marvelously beautiful.  He then went on to tell me how driven he too had been as a teenager to learn to play the guitar and how later on in life circumstances had forced him to stop playing for almost 17 years.  Another co-worker one day enticed him to try again after revealing to him how so much had changed in the amplifier technology and that almost anyone now has access to a great deal of this and other music technology at a fraction of the cost from the past.  After we shared some more on the subject I was bold in making a comment where as I reflected on all of the admirable qualities that I had learned to admire from my dear friend I could not ever imagine being able to compare him with my son.  I said, "My son is good at so many difficult things because of the compulsions that drive him to impulsively learn whatever it is that motivates him at the moment...I would however, not dare to compare him to you since I am sure you were probably nothing like him as a teenager...this boy is truly a handful...sometimes so wild and scary at the same time that I am terrified of all the possible outcomes...between his way of thinking and his alcohol and drug abuse, I am sure such a level headed individual like you was a much different child."  Instantly he started to laugh and as he looked at me he leaned back in his chair and started to share with me a great deal of stories of his wild teenage years.  Sure enough, my dear friend had also been a handful to say the least to his parents.  One by one he accounted for how one mistake after another eventually taught him enough about himself to want to make the changes that make him who he is today.  As my mind processed his words my heart felt lifted, relieved, and in a very special way blessed.  Without him knowing that he was doing so, every account, every tale, and every word suddenly became a gift of hope about my son.  Not once did he say, "don't worry...your son will be OK."  However, everything he shared in those ten or fifteen minutes that I was in his office brought a great sense of hope to me.  I would probably be betraying a great deal of his confidence if I wrote here his stories without first asking, so I defer to your imagination to fill in the blanks.

I hope that this does not sound too righteous or religious, but I have to share my thoughts on this gift given to me by a good friend.  I remember over 13 months ago when I started to write this blog how desperately hopeless I felt about my parenting of my difficult teenage son.  If you read from the bottom up it is not hard to notice a transformation taking place in my thought process.  I began sharing with you at a moment in which things were terribly confusing and I desperately needed to make sense of it all.  One post after the other gave me the opportunity to not only share my story, but also to take the time to re-think what had gone on in the earlier years, and re-process the events that led to me writing these stories in the first place.  Amazingly, some of the things that seemed so frustrating and difficult to understand at the moment that they were happening, became much more clearer as I recounted and shared them with you.  What began as my own personal way of venting, sorting, and sharing, eventually became my own personal way of understanding, accepting, and healing.  I do however do something much more often than I share with you here.  Even though I am admittedly very much a man of science, I am conflictingly also a man of faith.  You need to know that this realization comes even more difficultly to me than it does to you since I am constantly seeing the world with a great deal of scepticism.  However, if there is something that I am certain of and can give testimony to, that would be the fact that God has always blessed me with whatever I  need in order to be able to go on trying to be a good parent.  I find very little coincidence that a musical instrument calendar hanging on the wall of a fellow engineer which has year after year shared with me every discovery in quantum physics that he has read about, suddenly serves as the prelude for him to open up to me and starts to tell me his wild teenage life story.  I know in my heart that these moments of refueling are God's gift to me when I am in need of hope.  To a non-believer these moments are just coincidences, happenstances, and moments with very little special meaning.  To me, it is God's way of lifting up my spirits when I am lonely and dragging my feet.  So in my own simple way I am here sharing this story with you while I quietly whisper "Thank you God," and type away.

Dad