Ask Not What Your Parents Can Do For You
Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio's father died this past weekend. He has a touching tribute to his father -- who brought his family from Cuba for a better life in the states. I laughed at this part:
As a young child, I wore braces on my legs to correct a knee problem. I hated to wear them. So my dad would call from work and pretend to be Don Shula telling me I needed to wear them if I wanted to play for the Dolphins. (I always wondered why Shula had a Cuban accent on the phone but not on TV!)
And I got a bit emotional reading this part:
Many of us make the mistake of not remembering that our parents were once our age. It was around the time my father was my age that he realized he had to make a choice. He was never going to go back to Cuba, back to the dreams he had for himself as a boy. Now he had to focus on his family’s future and set them up so they could do the things he never could.
I realize everyday, and today more than ever, that every opportunity I have had is the result of the selfless decisions he made, even before I was born.
We, his four children, were the purpose of his life. And our accomplishments were not just a source of natural parental pride, they were and are affirmation that he mattered. That his life had real purpose. That his sacrifices were not in vain.
I'm sure that most folks aren't as selfish as I am, but I didn't realize a single thing about parental sacrifice until my first pregnancy. Diane is leading a fascinating conversation about whether the "American Dream" is in conflict with Christianity. This story shows that it need not be.
My husband and I recently watched a very cute film called The Winning Season. It's about a basketball coach who (spoiler alert!) becomes an adult with the help of the girls basketball team he coaches. It turns out that he was a promising young basketball player who went to Indiana University but mysteriously didn't play ball there. See, he had a young daughter to care for instead.
There are many ways to learn about sacrifice, of course, but marriage and children are excellent ones. It's perhaps more of a challenge to be grateful to those who have sacrificed for us.
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Jun '10
Re: Ask Not What Your Parents Can Do For You
Mollie: Very touching. My Dad died last year, a disabled WWII vet who spent his life running a small family farm so that my brother and I could live an easier life than he experienced. He never complained about his war injury (most of his upper right arm was missing as the result of a shrapnel wound), the pain it caused him, or about anything else.
One of the saddest results of post-modern society is how we have devalued the role of parents and marriage.
God bless those parents who throw themselves into teaching and raising the next generation.
Edited on Sep 7, 2010 at 9:01pmAug '10
Re: Ask Not What Your Parents Can Do For You
Mollie Hemingway:
It's perhaps more of a challenge to be grateful to those who have sacrificed for us. ·
Definitely. Even in the best of circumstances.
It becomes even more challenging when a family member to whom you owe your very life seems to have made those sacrifices unhappily, reluctantly, or even grudgingly. Then it can take some maturity to even see that a sacrifice been made, and a great deal of patience to appreciate it.
May '10
Re: Ask Not What Your Parents Can Do For You
Thanks for pointing that out Mollie. A lovely tribute. Many children of immigrants have similar tales to tell, a tribute itself to this great country.
And as for parental sacrifice (I don''t feel that the word "sacrifice" is quite correct, but I cannot come up with a better one), we are, all of us, entirely undeserving, both to our earthly parents and the big parent in heaven. Theories of negotiation and economics breakdown in a family. What a parent does for a child cannot really be re-payed, at least not in any direct sense. Only in the sense implied in Rubio's paragraph that you quote:
You've heard the saying, "living well is the best revenge"? Well, living well is also the best repayment, and the best testimonial that a child can offer a parent. In a healthy parent/child relationship, its the only repayment ever desired.
Jun '10
Re: Ask Not What Your Parents Can Do For You
Molly, thanks for working in this intimate subject...if ever the greatest guru on the highest peak answers the #1 and therefore, by popular demand, greatest question, the one that seems to bugger all discontented bachelors, university professors and mountain climbers, I am content in knowing that I have already placed my money on the winning answer.
Of course, the answer to the question, “what is the meaning of life?” must be: Family. I’m all in on that one.
A very wise and peculiarly humble man once told me that the first step toward being a good human being is being in love. There is a real, though unavoidable, sacrifice there. Then, marrying the one that you love, to stir the elixir of dedication and devotion by a force of good will. Then, even more, to give it all away, the whole kit & caboodle to the children that you will, through that love, devotion and commitment, give it all away.
Good for Mark Rubio. Good for him. And good for Florida.
Edited on Sep 8, 2010 at 5:18pm