Parents

In my seventies, I think of what a good parent I could be today now that I am too old for the job. I also remember blaming my mother for almost everything that ever went wrong in her life. I denounced her values. I was impatient with her tentativeness. I never accepted her as a good role model, and only now do I realize how much I have become like her.

You will know when you have actually become a mature adult because you will be able to see your parents as the two people they are separate from their parent roles. It is amazing to begin to understand why they parented the way they did. It is also comforting to know that the things you disliked the most in them are what you avoided most in your own relationship with your children. Examples would be physical punishment or shaming as a form of discipline.

We never cease having a child within, and that child never ceases looking for someone to soothe his pain, to love him when he least deserves it. That person may be a parent of choice rather than an actual parent, but they are out there, and you will be aware of them as they come in to your life at different times. Meanwhile trying to appreciate what your parents went through is helpful.

For me, parenting was the toughest job I ever did. I never felt up to the task but did the best I could at the time. I would like to do it over again now that I have gained a higher degree of wisdom to do so.