Time Flies
The Lessons Parenting Teaches Us: Being Present, Letting Go, and Love
This weekend, my only child—my son—turns 35.
I still live in the house we moved into when he was two years old.
The backyard initially had a plastic kiddie splash pool. As he grew, the pool was replaced by a swing set. I would sit on the deck reading while he and his friends from across our backyards did tricks on the sliding board. Then, there were bicycle tricks with homemade ramps and later, Razor scooters with lighted wheels. It doesn’t seem that long ago.
The years blur like they do when you are parenting. There were occasional long days that never seemed to end. During the panic of September 11 when my calls to his middle school went unanswered because their phone lines were flooded. No one knew what was happening. I wasn’t supposed to be at home that day—I was supposed to be in Los Angeles.
But, I was exactly where I needed to be—with my fifth-grader.
For me, parenting was a constant calibration between holding on and stepping back. Teach, let him fly, let him fall. Recover. Teach, watch him fly, watch him soar. Applaud.
A lot of these lessons were learned in sports. He always loved combat sports. Wrestling, boxing (thankfully was brief), high school football for only a year. The rugby years were a test for me. “Teach, let him fly.” He loved rugby. There is a reason it is a club sport and not a school sport. I longed for football. “Hey, maybe try boxing again,” I remember saying.
Almost twenty years later, we can laugh about it.
We meet for lunch a couple of times a month. We talk about current topics, and every now and then, he’ll bring up something from the past, a small thing. I didn’t think mattered. When he was a boy, a tornado touched down a few miles away. It was heading in our direction. As we hurried to the first floor for safety, I darted into the garage for our bicycle helmets. Teach. I distracted him by talking about why we protect our brains.
He remembered. The funnel cloud went back into the air.
We never know what our children are going to remember.
They are always watching us.
Ten years ago, on that same deck where I read as the kids played, he got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend, now wife. Her family and best friends surprised her as we stood in the yard where the swing set used to be.
Please join me in wishing my son a happy 35th birthday!
Time flies.
Happy birthday!!
What a beauty he is. Pride bursts onto the page.