Sunday, June 21, 2015

Father's Day 2015


     The most useful advice I ever got about parenting came from my wife, appropriately enough. I've repeated it a hundred times, to strangers in the street, seconds after learning they have children.
     But I don't believe I've written it, yet. 
     So here goes:
     "They're going to have to push away from us, no matter how good of parents we've been."
     I think of that sentence as the "Source Code." Keeping it in mind saves a world of bother, a lot of arguments. You don't want wear a coat? Fine, don't wear a coat, if it makes you happy.  No kid ever froze to death, at least not in Northbrook.
     Let your kids walk a block ahead of you, order something they don't like off the menu, screw up in small ways. It's practice for them. When Ross had his bar mitzvah, I didn't write his speech, I didn't even read it. I sat back and listened to it with everyone else, secure that, if it were something dumb, well, it was his bar mitzvah, not mine. 
    It wasn't dumb, by the way. It rocked. The best way to make people trustworthy is to trust them. 
     The boys are 18 and 19—not boys anymore, but still well into the pushing-away phase. Both are working this summer, both going to college in the fall, Kent as a freshman at Northwestern, Ross a sophomore out in Pomona. At this point, my job is pretty much done. I just have to pay for stuff, try to impose minimum standards of cleanliness around the house—a tougher task than it sounds—and hope for what snatches of polite conversation come my way, which aren't much. I'm hoping that changes, someday, but there are no guarantees.
     I miss the open enthusiasms they had as children, the lack of languor, but I'm not sorry their childhood is over. That was what was supposed to happen, what we were pushing toward, and it would be selfish and futile to desire otherwise. 
     If I had to encapsulate my emotions toward fatherhood in one word, I'd say, "lucky." I've always felt lucky, as a father. Not just because the boys are healthy and smart and interesting and never stepped in front of a speeding bus or got kidnapped by a fiend. But lucky because I enjoyed the sacrifices involved with parenthood. They weren't sacrifices at all, in fact, because I wanted to do it. There was no higher priority. I could spin that as some excellence of mine, but the unvarnished truth is that it was more a matter of temperament.
      I should point out that the boys would certainly object, insisting that I was a terrible father, prone to anger and acts of staggering incompetence, not to mention my general failure to provide ponies, pool tables and the vast homes that all their friends' fathers managed to provide.  ("They're going to have to push away, no matter how...") Duly noted.  
     One sentence in Adam Gopnik's magnificent memoir, Paris to the Moon, sums up exactly how I felt about being a father.
      His wife gets pregnant, and part of the book entertains the reader with the peculiarities of having a baby in Paris—his wife's obstetrician encourages her to drink wine but warns against salad. Then Olivia is born; Gopnik takes one look at her, and realizes: 
     The world is a meaningless place, and we are weird, replicating mammals on its surface, yet the whole purpose of the universe since it began was, in a way, to produce this baby, who is the tiny end point of a funnel that goes back to the beginning of time, a singularity that history was pointing toward from the start.
    Exactly. Having kids is the most important thing you ever do. "The only really majestic choice we get to make in life," is how Gopnik puts it. I grasped that, immediately. Lucky. I hadn't dreamed of having children, never thought about it, really, it wasn't a priority, but keeping my wife happy was, and I feel so fortunate that I instantly got what we were trying to do here. Some dads struggle with that, like trying to force themselves into a too small jacket. Some guys never get it. 
     When Ross was a baby, he liked to be pushed in the swing set. A lot. And I would take him to the park in East Lake View, with its camel and Lake Shore Drive whizzing by, and push him in the swing for half an hour, an hour, even 90 minutes. It gave me great pleasure that other dads would come, push their kids, get bored, move on, and another dad would come and take his place, repeat the process, generations of dads, it seemed to me, while I would still be pushing, in no rush, with nowhere else to go, nothing better to do, pushing Ross as much as he liked, both of us enjoying the time together. It was both of our ideas of fun. 

15 comments:

  1. Within my tribe, having and nuturing children is considered the greatest mitzvah of all. Word.

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    1. Mr. Urborg, may I ask if you are of the Reformed sect?

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    2. I was raised Traditional which was basically Orthodox except men and women could sit together in temple. Now I consider myself spiritually and culturally Jewish but do not follow specific guidelines. I have the soul of a Jew.

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    3. thanks, that's very interesting-that's good to know some ortho. allow the 2 sexes to sit together

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  2. A good column with fine advice. You sound like a good dad, Mr. S. Of course we have to get angry at times. Your wife sounds wise indeed. Yes, make them stick to those standards of cleaniless, as you said. Happy Father's Day to you.

    Reader/subscriber

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  3. For Sunday- in line with some previous discussion here- a statement in the ST, the CTU saying the CPS system went broke on purpose.

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  4. oops sorry, that was meant for the other blog

    Anyhow, Fountain has a good article about Fatherhood in the ST today.

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  5. A new phase. And probably not all bad. As the old joke about when life begins has it: "When the kids go away to college and the dog dies."

    Not that we would want anything bad to befall heroic dog.

    And it's not as if you'll never see them again. Even if the young one lives on campus how will he get his laundry done?

    Tom Evans

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    1. That's true. When Ross came home at Christmas, he brought two big suitcases, crammed with dirty laundry.

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    2. As long as he helped with the laundry. :)

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    3. Probably had to pay an extra fare for bags with the airline too. Good thing most colleges have laundry facilities on campus.

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  6. Who knows, NS. In several years you may be writing about how you are gaining a daughter in law and will be a grandpa, through your eldest.

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  7. The day will come when you suddenly realize that you are having an adult conversation with your son. It will be normal, like a conversation with a friend.

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