A Life Well-Lived
I grew up in a single parent household. My mother was 100% of my parental influence, which is, sadly, more often the case in life. I have great admiration for my mother, both for what she achieved professionally in her life and how she went about her role as parent to me and my sisters. The things I have mentioned previously that I liked about her parenting included that she was a big fan of forcing independence on us. I was basically making my own life decisions from the age of 16 on. She also seemed to recognize that each of her three kids needed different amounts of engagement at different times in our lives. She took a bespoke approach to parenting versus a purely dogmatic approach and was both situational and personal in that approach. Those two qualities alone made her a great parent in my eyes and I have always tried to match those traits in my own parenting. When my mother shucked off her earthly coil at the age of 100, she did so with each of her kids being well-prepared for life in their own way and resolute in the belief that they had been blessed with a great mother who fulfilled the total parent requirements for all three of us as we each needed them. By my definition, that made hers a life exceptionally well-lived regardless of any other of her many accomplishments (and they were, indeed, plentiful).
I too have three children and they are all very different from one another on many different dimensions. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, as do we all, and I feel I have come to know them all very well in that regard and with respect to what they need from me as a parent. As the breadwinner of both families (the children come from two different mothers), it would be easy to say that my primary role is as a provider for them in a material sense. That would be true except that there would be am implication that they needed nothing more than money from me and I think that is decidedly not the case with regard to any of the three. A few years ago I was working on my back hillside with a craftsman who was getting on in years and was clearly not on sound financial footing since he was always talking to me about investing in his business or buying some excess assets that he owned. One morning, to head that sort of discussion off at the pass, I railed at him about some obligation or other that I had to help out one of my children in a financial bind. It really was a tactic designed for this guy’s advances towards me, but I found it easy to drift into a state of mind where I built up a head of steam that ws quite convincing to him that I was tired of supporting my adult children. It was an unintentional drift, but there are few accidents in life and I probably did have some of those feeling below the surface. He looked at me rather shocked and looked around at my nice home and property and the discretionary things I was doing to beautify it and said to me with a high a high degree of denigration, “what is it all for if not to help your children?” I must admit, his comment caught me flat-footed because he struck me as a guy who would have fended off any approaches by his own children for money, but his words stung me nonetheless.
It got me thinking and I found that I agreed with that sentiment 100%. There is nothing I have that I would not give up for my children. However, I also am well aware that enabling your children by making it too easy for them is equally not doing right by them. My mother taught me that leaving your kids to be independent and grow strong in their independence is an important part of parenting. The trick is to know when to stick to that as the primary goal and when to revert to the bespoke helping hand that each might need at various times in their lives. I know that compared to many parents, I am considered a soft touch when it comes to my kids and that might be a valid superficial assessment, but I don’t think its as simple as that. One of the reasons I was comfortable moving out here to California when my kids all lived on the East Coast was that I wanted to create an exaggerated sense of distance and independence to help them each realize that their lives were theirs to live as they choose. Whatever molding I was able to do as a parent was done long ago and the time for pushing back on my kids for their life choices has long since past. It is now about supporting them in whatever ways I can and giving them whatever help I can when they need it. I believe they each want very much to be fully independent, so in that I feel I have succeeded. But by the same token, I believe they all know that I am both here for them when they need help and that I very much want them to feel comfortable asking for help.
Who the hell ever knows if we have done a good job parenting or not. That is simply not an easy assessment to make, especially about one’s own relationship with one’s kids. I know I love my children and I know they know that, but whether I have found the perfect balance between helping and enabling is very hard to tell. We are all a product of our upbringing and at least I can say that none of my reactions to my children and fulfilling their needs is an aberrant outcome of my own upbringing by my mother. It is altogether possible that my father’s lack of parental involvement is a direct impact on the balancing act that I play, making me more prone to helping and thereby risking enabling, but I think the overriding influence of my mother keeps that from being too much of an overbearing influence. Self-analysis has its limitations, but when thinking and talking about your relationship with your children, I’m not entirely sure that anyone else’s analysis, even that of a professional overrule your own judgement. Raising kids is as personal a process as one has in life and I think it is fair to say that there are few things more important than that.
We all want to feel that we have lived our lives well and the best reflection of that has little to do with material things that one accumulates. It has everything to do with the feelings one leaves with people when we depart. And there are few people in the world who matter more in that regard than your children. In my case, I care about how my three kids think of me, how Kim thinks of me and perhaps how my sisters think of me. If I have done right enough by all of them in their own estimation, then I have accomplished a life well-lived.