The Cat's In the Cradle

A child arrived just the other day, 

Came into the world in the usual way,

-Harry Chapin, The Cat's in the Cradle

Thirteen years ago this week, Michele and I were waiting for an arrival.  In the most realistic re-enactment of Advent ever.  We were expecting our first child, a boy, to be named Jackson.  We had decided that Michele's former last name would make a pretty good first name, and we did not yet realize that Jackson or Jaxson was going to be one of the more trendy names for celebrities and regular people alike for the next few years.

The waiting seemed endless, probably more so for Michele than it was for me, but it was excruciating for me, all other information is speculation.  The first child is a mixture of hope, expectation and abject terror.  You prepare, you wait, you try to talk yourself into the idea that you are somehow grown-up enough to be a parent, and mostly you don't succeed. Then, all of the sudden, you have this little pink thing that cries a lot and needs you for everything. Life takes a hold and you start working your way through the milestones: walking, talking, potty training, going off to school.  Everything seems to absorb big chunks of your life.

Older, wiser people, like to sort of laugh at you and tell you to treasure the time you have because it goes by awfully fast.  You're not quite sure what they're talking about, until you blink and that little baby is about to turn into a teenager, complete with an often frustrating mind of his own and a voice that is probably about to drop an octave just about any day.  You realize that you're only five years away from sending an 18 year old out into the world of college and proto-adulthood.  He will be starting to drive in a mere three years, and that is both existentially and emotionally terrifying.

How did this happen?  How were all those "it's going to fly by" people so cussedly correct?  What business do I have trying to parent a teenager?  I seriously feel like I was just a teenager myself not terribly long ago.

If you can put away that sort of hand wringing for a minute, you notice that these little babies you used to know everything about are becoming actual people, and that's not a bad thing.  They have the ability to surprise you and frustrate you and make you awfully proud sometimes.  You worry more about them than you probably ever worried about yourself, and you sort of like the idea that they are going to go on into the future and live out this cycle for themselves.

Kahlil Gibran says this in The Prophet:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."

And he said: "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.

I'm about to have a teenager.  I would really like to be a stable bow.