I have, as of late, had cause to think about
PARENTING. I’ve explicitly been asked to do so - for a friend’s recent baby
shower it was requested that all guests write down a few thoughts on the subject; figuratively, my FACEBOOK FEED is
reflective of no less than five little babies (or sonogram pics) in my
immediate, desert-island friend group (to say nothing of those I’d want
on an adjoining island, and to say especially little about the ones
whose coconut-constructed cry for H-E-L-P at which I’d wrinkle my ski-jump nose as I flew over their island in my private jet). So. Parenting.
After some deep thought and MEMORY-MINING and trying to formulate
some sort of SOMETHING to pass along to these women - my friends - who are
or are about to be mothers, the best I can come up with (as a CHILDLESS HUMAN) is this:
In
an ideal world (and as with any other serious undertaking) you will, of
course, want to have an
overarching, big-picture, GLOBAL PLAN regarding how you want to BE (as a
parent, or as a husband, or wife, or friend). But from what I’ve seen
in my
31 years spent as someone’s KID, parenting may be solely about waking up
every single day, prepared to deal with some
seriously weird, possibly awkward, and at times WILDLY UNCOMFORTABLE
situations - and if you’re able to find it all a little FUNNY
(even if it's only funny on some sort of twisted, far-away planet out
there in the universe that you don't want to admit exists), then the
odds are IN YOUR FAVOR that both you and your kid will stand a
chance in this world.
Is this helpful advice? Accurate advice? Is
it advice, at all? I DON’T KNOW. But it is all I have to give, and in
formulating it, I was reminded of the following story:
I was
eight years old, and my Dad and I were walking around our neighborhood
so I could sell Girl Scout Cookies door-to-door. At each house he'd wait
for me at the end of the driveway while I subjected our neighbors to my TRULY ADORABLE sales pitch (truly
adorable as in - if I remember correctly - I
was missing some KEY TEETH around that time, which naturally transformed any
attempts at serious sales technique into a lisp-y little treatise on
Girl
Thcout Cookieth).
This wasn't our first trip around the neighborhood: raffle tickets and
UNICEF buckets and our-dog-got-out-have-you-seen-
hims had all seen
this route
before, but there was one house, prior to this day, at which knocking
had never before produced an occupant, and whose porch lights were never
on, ever - and they shone even darker when the neighborhood kids
were all costumed-up and looking to fill their Halloween pumpkin-baskets
with candy. This house sat high up on a steep front yard, the stairs
leading
to the front door a crumbling, rocky series of switchbacks. The
yard was dotted with aloe plants, sparsely planted in tiered rows, and
sad and drooping like prisoners. Why we stopped there that day I DON'T
KNOW - but
I remember, distinctly, walking up those stairs and knowing full well
that something was
about to HAPPEN. When I rang the bell it let off the sort of screech
that does nothing
to settle eight year old nerves, and I looked down at my Dad, a small speck on
the
sidewalk, as the door swung open.
YES? said the large, old man with the thick, spiked dog collar around
his neck. MAY I HELP YOU? I stood for a moment or two, staring and
silent, before squeaking out my lines. I’D LOVE TO BUY SOME COOKIES. WHY
DON’T YOU COME INSIDE AND I’LL WRITE YOU A CHECK? Well-versed in the
rules of STRANGER DANGER, his invitation sent me running - RUNNING -
back down the hill, skidding and kicking rocks up as my Dad, justifiably
alarmed at my reaction, started towards me.
Hand in hand, we made
our way back up. The man’s wife joined him in
the doorway as my Dad explained - not angrily, but in a LISTEN HERE tone
- to the man that it was not appropriate to ask a small child to come
into your house, no, not even if your wife was sitting just inside, and
what, exactly, was he thinking? Eventually it was agreed
upon by all parties that I was a very smart little girl, and that I had
done the exact right thing, and then the man wrote us a check for
twenty-six boxes of Thin Mints and we were on our way.
The walk home was quiet; the dog collar was an especially absent topic.
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