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A Father’s Imagination, for Better or Worse
Three of my kids are at summer camp. It’s for a short duration—five days—and as I write this I’m halfway through it. That is to say, I miss them. They weren’t gone for more than a few hours before I asked my wife if it would be pathetic for me to admit I missed them already. She just smiled and let me know it’s what good dads do.
I saw a picture of my oldest daughter yesterday on the camp Facebook post. She was singing, captivating, beautiful. I immediately began to imagine her leaving the nest, perhaps getting married. I have no illusions that when the time comes, I’ll be a wreck. That goes for the boys, too. My oldest is seventeen and though he’s ready and raring to get out and tackle the future, I can only imagine life without him here.
It’s not all sunshine and roses. Sometimes they cook my grits to be sure, and the quiet around here is kind of refreshing—for a while anyway – and then I start thinking about what my other son would be doing if he were here, sitting on the sofa across from me, and I can’t imagine life without him either.
I often hear people complain about their kids. Typically they’re joking or making light out of the stresses parenthood brings. I get it. I’ve probably done it myself, but I shouldn’t. In the last few years I’ve taken to cringing when I hear off-color remarks by parents devaluing their kids, even when I know it’s in jest. If you – like me – have done this, no shame. But let’s stop. There are so many people out there praying desperately for the opportunity to be parents, so many others who have lost children and who would gladly give anything they possess to spend even five minutes with them again.
I can’t imagine that kind of loss.
By the time you read this – Lord willing – all of my kids will be back under my roof and sleeping in their own beds, for a while. The day will come when they’ll leave for good, slowly, one at a time. I don’t know what life will look like then. I simply can’t imagine not getting woken up by a toddler gently climbing into my bed, or by pre-teen kiddos stomping upstairs, or by the young man shutting and relocking the front door after receiving the Amazon shipment for me. I have a hard time imagining life without them, and thankfully I still have a few here to play with when I’m done writing this, and the promise of more coming home in a couple of days.
I can only imagine what they’re thinking about right now. I hope they know how much we love them and value everything they’ve brought into our lives. I suspect that if my wife is right, and we’ve done our job correctly, that a part of them cannot imagine not coming home as well.
Published in Group Writing
As the old saying goes, Little pitchers have big ears. They hear, and they absorb what is said about them. I believe your advice is sound on stopping the complaining.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under June’s theme of Now That’s Imagination! If you have a type of imagination that you would like to talk about or if you’d like to share a short story in honor of this month’s theme, our sign-up sheet awaits with still about a dozen openings.
My baby is going to turn ten at the end of the summer. She consoled me recently that in not too long a time she’ll have grandbabies for me to hold on my lap at church and keep me warm (it’s always chilly and I ask her to sit on my lap).
My 12 year old curled up with me last night for a brief cuddle. The 19 year old still will, from time to time.
Do you know that Robert Munsch book, I’ll Love you Forever? The mother rocks her son every night and sings to him. Even when he’s grown up and become a man.
My favorite image is her driving across town with a ladder on the roof of her car so she can crawl up to his window and sneak up to his bed and cuddle and sing to her baby…
My baby will be 38 next week. He and my daughter have now been gone from our home longer than they lived with us. They each came home for the summer after their freshman year in college, then were gone for good.
My husband and I have prided ourselves on the way we adjusted to our childrens’ absence, and we succeeded in building a new way of life. We now have 3 grandchildren, and get to see them almost often enough, and they are a joy.
But I always cry hard at high school graduations, because, for me, it was the end of the happiest part of my life. There is nothing I have found to replace the bliss of having my children under my roof and foot.
I took it all for granted. You are very, very wise, and blessed, to feel your happiness as it happens.
When they leave the nest they get to be more fun. I mean that. Mine are all adults now in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties.
When you do a good job raising them once they leave, they are no longer just your children – they are your allies. I know with my three, they are always there for me when I need them, and I don’t even have to ask. Somehow they know.
Father-son / father-daughter activities continue, they are just different. My middle son’s hobby is photography. When I wrote a book a few years back, I asked him if he would do photography. We went around to various museums and historical sites for several months (including a trip to the labs of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology) and had a blast. When it was over, I was kind of sad, but glad he had put up with his father. Then, three weeks later he calls me up and asks when we are going to do it again. So I lined up another book project.
I help my oldest son design role-playing campaigns, and do home repair projects with the youngest.
Best of all? Grandkids.
I know this is true not just because of my experiences as a parent, but because of my experiences as a child. My dad passed away last week, one week shy of his 94th birthday. I would call him every Saturday morning to catch up with each other. According to one of my sons, who visited dad on a vacation, the call was a high point of his week. (It certainly was for me.) Even when they are in their sixties, your children will continue to delight you.
Trust me – enjoy them while they are growing up, but don’t worry about what happens when they leave. It gets better.
Oh good.
Vince, Seawriter said it so much more eloquently than I could, and said it exactly right. Don’t borrow clouds from tomorrow’s storms to cover today’s sunshine. I do that myself, coloring today’s joy with tomorrow’s sadness. My baby graduated high school this spring and will be two hours away in the fall. So I was in full @JamesLileks mode of thinking of everything we were doing as the last time we did this and the last time we did that. But I am enjoying my older ones as adults so much that I realized the love doesn’t end. It just changes. So I am (mostly, well more than 51% of the time) leaving those thoughts behind. Also, my wife and I are looking forward to our first time alone in nearly 30 years.
God bless you, and may that time be as fruitful as it has been well earned.
When my daughter was in high school, she used to take my hair brush and/or various makeup tools and forget to return them to my bathroom. I’d get out of the shower all wet and only then realize that my brush or terrycloth robe were gone. After she went away to college, I actually missed having to run over to her bathroom to get my stuff back. She graduated this year, and now we are like friends, and it’s so rewarding.
You are a good dad.
When our last child moved out, my wife and I had time to rediscover each other. When the kids were home, we didn’t focus on each other enough. When the kids left, we realized we still really enjoyed spending time together. We loved raising our kids. We love our time without them as well. The sun still rises and each day is wonderful.
When I was raising my son, we lived in a very preppie neighborhood. It seemed like everybody but me had the energy to be jogging, signing up for tennis tournaments, organizing community sing alongs, planting a garden that was well maintained, and a dozen other activities as well.
“Where do they get the energy?” I would muse on those days when I had the energy to muse.
Then he went out of state to college, and suddenly I understood how adults could have such energy. (Not that I didn’t miss him a bunch.)
We had the empty nest for a while. Been there, done that. Then one son started spending winters with us, and when their grandparents died we suggested the other could move in with us for a while — he had been a live-in caretaker for them for several years. We enjoy having them around. Now the caretaker son has got his life and schedule back together and has a good job, so he’s not around during the day. I don’t know how long either of them will care to keep living with us, but while they do we have live-in house sitters, which makes travel easier for Mrs R and me. We’re taking advantage of it while we can, and while we’re still young enough to do a lot of travel.
That’s not quite the way I had expected it should work, but the more I think about it the more I ask myself, “Why not?” Well, getting married and getting families of their own would be an excellent reason why not, but nobody is chafing at the way it’s working now.