Eyes that Warm in the Last Quarter

Can't say that a week has gone by in many years in which I haven't seen a child (we have three), their spouse, or their children. Friday nights -- typically -- 2 families of my clan show up for dinner ... a shared ritual. That I feel loved? is not in question. The mind is a very messy place, though, wherein conflicting feelings intercalate ... interweave ... interloaf ... intertwine .... ... as the kids say: 'get into each other's shit.' 

It was last night. One child with their spouse and three kids (one young woman and 11 year old twins) came over for a snack on their way to a school concert. I was glad to see them but oh! so complex are the stirrings inside. After they left, M and I watched the Musical production of Shrek. It was great but, still, Shrek "in the tongue of a foreign nation" (the great Old French scholar Rashi would abbreviate that wordy idea with four letters ... בלע׳׳ז) means to scream and a minority voice in my head could've voted for just such a scream. I was -- if only for moments -- Shrek whose eyes filled with tears as he feared that his only love would marry some feckless and Shrekless King-Schmendrick-Wannabe. No. I wasn't worried that M would run off with some small-person-with-a-crown-and-an-Ego to fit it! M was there for the long-haul ... We got together 50 years ago and the bond we formed on our first walk from Summit Avenue to her home on 5th Street in Providence holds to this day ... as our hands did.

It was different. M and I had run out to pick up a Pizza and a Greek Salad, knowing they'd be in a rush to get their nuclear clan to the acapella fete. We set the table and did what grandparents like to do. The oldest child is home from school on break and we'll not see her, again, for 4 weeks or so. The youngest two are quite civilized ... but, what to say: they're 11 years old. They eat with gusto ... they talk over each other ... they can never quite get over the penchant for keeping their world waiting ... they behave like the not-yet-born children of Mother-Rebekkah in Genesis: "And the sons ran about inside of her" .... May they compete for many, many joyous years. And they -- with no doubt -- do wonderful things for their grandparents. It was nothing they did that had me wistful.

How to explain?

There was a doctor named Hans Loewald who didn't die so many years ago. He once wrote that in the very act of growing up and becoming competent ... of feeding themselves and independently walking and talking and running and writing and becoming googoo-eyed over cute boys ... in doing what they're supposed to be doing, these children are making their parents irrelevant ... OK ... you wanna say "Less relevant?" I'm good with that, too. The very people who once did all for their spawn and whose ministrations to their little rugrats were seen as the major duties in life ... those very people were now -- so to speak -- unemployed. Loewald described it as psychic parricide ... doing in the parents by no longer needing those functions that once had made life itself possible.

When this occurs .... 

Very disturbed parents look down at their children and what's clearly discernible in their gaze is: 

Well! You don't need me anymore. 

So, hit the road, Jack ... and Jill ... and Jennifer!

I don't need you, neither.
Vaia con Dios!

Deluded parents who remain oblivious of any pain associated with their children's imminent departure into autonomous adulthood pretend:

Oh! Isn't that wonderful.

Look. You don't need me anymore and never will, again.

How much happier can a parent be?!
(is there an emoticon for 2 fingers down the throat?)

In my own understanding of the unfolding of life, the parent closer to their own feelings communicates with warmed eyes:

I'll always love you.

I think you're doing great.

Still, I miss those days when you curled up in my arms.
They were wondrous.

And while you don't need to be in the crook of my arm any longer,

You always have a place, here.

I'm coming to learn that there is a variant on these options that apply to Grandparents ... us frequent denizens of Life's Last Quarter. Last night, I watched as my youngest child and her family had come together as a cohesive and cohering family ... with their own way of being ...

For Grandparents? No longer is it the child drifting into a successful independence, but now each of the new families created in these folds of the life lived that moves into its own World.

Hokey! Hokey! Hokey, Howard!

OK! I knew this all before and, yet, each time I witness my own response to such situations ... Joy and Sweet Sadness mixed together with Pizza and Greek Salad ... or Cassoulet (cholent) and Potato Puddings (kugel), I choke up just a little like Corny Old Green Shrek when he fears that Fiona is gone for good ... and truthfully? I wanna scream ... I wanna Shrek .... No-o-o-o-oh!

So goes it! Enough!

I long have been a fan of Gibran's comments on parents and kids .... I think they apply to Grandma and Grandpa's feelings, too ... mutatis mutandis.

On Children

 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.