A rchive Date
[ 18-06-2000 ]
Category
[ Psychology ]
sub-Categoy
[ Parenting ]
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[Mom and dad ... this one's for you
There's a big difference between being afraid of your children and afraid for your children
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Toronto Sun
June 18, 2000
I think about Father's Day, and Mother's Day, a lot more now than I used to before my own mother and father died.
Back when they were alive, both days were little more than a pleasant chore, really. Make sure you make them a present when you're a kid, make sure you buy them a present when you're older, and, for some, make sure you visit them with the grandkids by the time you're a mother or father yourself.
Then, one day, inevitably, mom and dad will be gone. My mother died when I was 18, my dad when I was 31.
Obviously, my mother, Rose, never got to see her two grandchildren. Never got to see me get married. She died of a massive heart attack. I still miss her. I still ask her for advice.
I can still hear what she'd say.
Years later, my dad, Al Henry, clung to life fiercely in hopes of seeing his first grandchild born. But he gave up, I think, when he realized he just wasn't going to make it. He died two months before his namesake, Alan, "Al" for short, was born. Lung cancer.
Recently, I read in the Hamilton Spectator that the woman who started the modern version of Mother's Day in 1907, teacher Anna Jarvis, did so in order to mark the anniversary of the death of her own mom. Ironically, she spent the rest of her life fighting against the commercialization of Mother's Day. She died, penniless, as a result of her unsuccessful legal efforts to stifle her own creation.
No such luck. By 1913, Mother's Day had become so embedded in the American consciousness that the U.S. Congress, under President Woodrow Wilson, declared the second Sunday in May to be "dedicated to the memory of the best mother in the world ... your mother."
Despite the irony of how it all began, I kind of like the idea that Mother's Day was originally a tribute to the "memory" of mothers. Makes me feel not quite so left out.
Anyway, here's what I often think about on Mother's Day, and Father's Day as well.
I don't think a lot about being a dad myself.
I guess I'm still amazed that I am one, even though my son is now bigger than I am, but as gentle as a bear cub. And my daughter, a few years behind him, is so beautiful in every sense that she makes my heart sing.
But what I do think about is that while I was a pretty good son growing up and my dad and I were close most of the time, and very close when he died, I wasted a lot of time.
Time spent feuding with him in the years after my mother - his wife - died. It wasn't all my fault, to be sure.
As in most postwar families, my mom was the glue that held our family together and, in large measure, I think most of our relatives would agree, our extended family as well.
She was always the peacemaker when friends or relatives, or my dad and I, were feuding, the one person both sides - both of us - would listen to because we loved her so much.
Now, as I look back on it, I've come to understand that often, she was the insulation that made the relationship between my father and me work. And when she died so unexpectedly, it wasn't that dad and I didn't love each other any more, but that we had both lost the one person always able to explain each of us to the other. And so we had to learn, relearn really, how to get along. Years later, long after both my parents were gone, I think I finally did figure things out.
Me? I was too unforgiving when my dad, soon after mom died, married an old friend whose husband had also passed away.
Of course I wrongly felt he was somehow betraying mom. I was wrong, again, when I later blamed that friend for the breakup of her marriage to my dad.
The heart wants what the heart wants. It aches when it aches. And sometimes, when the ache dulls, the heart changes. I didn't understand that then. I do now.
My dad? He was wrong, when I finally found the love of my life, to reject her at first because she wasn't of our faith.
Years later, on his death bed, he would tell one of his nurses that my wife had become "more than a daughter" to him.
He was thinking about all those years that she had loved him, even, at the very end, in the final stages of her pregnancy, still coming to see him every day she could.
I think my dad finally figured out, as I did, that my wife had become the conciliator between us that his wife, my mom, had been when I was a child - the one person who could always bring us back together because we both loved her so.
So a word of friendly advice to you on this Father's Day, if you're still lucky enough to have your dad, or mom, around.
Tell them you love them. If you're feuding, let it go. If you can't let it go, lay it down. You can fight tomorrow. But you can still tell your parents you love them today.
Most of all, don't waste time. Don't make the mistake of thinking your parents will always be around or that you'll always have the chance to make amends. Time flies.
Some day your parents won't be there. Some day you'll only be able to talk to them in your thoughts, with words you can only hope they somehow hear. Words like these.
Lorrie can be reached at (416) 947-2212, by fax at (416) 947-3228 or by e-mail at lgoldste@sunpub.com. Or visit his home page
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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