Running to Catch Her

My older daughter, Megan, recently turned sixteen. That can be a somewhat bittersweet birthday for a father, or any parent for that matter.

On the one hand you have a milestone birthday which you know she is excited to celebrate, because it ushers in the days of increased, independent mobility. In the eyes of a teen, the prospects offered by a driver’s license are no less than those considered by someone watching their cell door open at the end of a sixteen year prison sentence.

However, it isn’t only that independence itself which seems important to her. I think there is also an awakening which is happening at this age, a sense of maturing, or feeling that she is entering into the world of being a young woman.

It’s this last part that I find most frightening, actually. That she can move about in the world with more ease and without my help is something I’ve already had to learn to adjust to and accept. But, it is difficult for me to begin thinking of her as a young woman.

The realization and acceptance of what she is becoming runs contrary to the way I have always thought of both of my girls. I never considered it until recently, but I see now that I have always pictured them in a static state, either as the person I see them as now, or in the image I have of them from some point when they were younger. Often I find myself comparing the two, and wondering how we got from there to here. I’ve never really envisioned them in their futures, grown up, and away, probably out of self-protective reasons. It’s just never dawned on me to contemplate it. It’s beyond my horizons.

Parenting, for me, has been a satisfying, yet worrisome journey. When my first daughter was born, I have to confess that I’m not certain I was emotionally ready to be a father. I didn’t settle into a marriage until I was thirty-four, and she arrived in our lives just one year later. I had barely begun adjusting to being a husband—a life far different than the one I’d known—and then found myself thrust into yet another new, and even more challenging role.

I was afraid of the responsibility, or, at the very least, felt unprepared for it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever witnessed good parenting in practice, and, because I hadn’t really considered it a reality in my immediate future, I’d done nothing to compensate for that lack of role models, or prepare myself for it. I also knew it meant my life was changed forever, that it meant a commitment on a level I’d never before contemplated, and all that frightened me.

I think it took me nearly a year to adjust, for the full impact to really settle in. But, in time, I went from going through the motions of being a parent to deeply loving this little person who could, in turn, love me back, and return the affections I showed her. She gradually got under my emotional skin.

But that initial, unsettled feeling from those first days has never really left me completely. I think it comes from the understanding that, as a parent, you have to be the ultimate person responsible for someone else’s safety, well-being, and development toward a happy life. If anything goes wrong, there is no one else to call in for backup, and no one else but you to blame. You’re it. If you screw it up, you are responsible for the misery of someone you love.

After each of the girls were born, I had a recurring nightmare that would wake me. One of them would slip off the side of a boat we were in, out in the middle of a wide and deep lake. I would dive in after them, only to be unable to swim fast enough to catch them, and I would watch them slowly fade away from me and into the water column. Somewhere I read that kind of a dream is fairly common for new fathers. It’s our unconscious thoughts wrestling with, and working through, the fears and responsibilities we see as a father’s role.

Mix those concerns with the additional challenge of being a man who is a father of two daughters, and another set of complexities become involved. Try as I might to be sincere, or enlightened, or mature, or caring, or loving, or affectionate, or different, there are aspects of the girls' lives from which I will always be locked out. It feels unfair at times, but it is a simple truth with which I have had to deal and adjust.

With both of my daughters I have always felt like I am in uncharted waters. I’ve never been a girl, and I will never know what that life includes, no matter how much I try. And, because I always think of them in their current or prior state, and have a tendency to never think ahead in their lives, I always feel like I am playing catch up with them as they grow, mature, change, and evolve.

That same unsettled feeling.

A friend recently asked me something interesting: she wondered at which point a parent reaches that threshold of not acting on the cares and concerns they have for their grown, or growing children. “What is the difference,” she asked, “between worrying about what I do at 18 and while living at home, and being 28 and living out on my own?” The only answer I could muster was some sort of “out of sight, out of mind” rationale for behaviors and actions I would one day not witness. I had never really thought about that happening within the context of my relationship with the girls, and her question made me wonder where that point might be reached in our future.

Thinking of this brought me face to face with what must be a fear of every responsible and loving father: one day, in the not-so-distant future, they will both leave to live and experience the world on their own, and they will no longer need me.

And in considering that time and all that it implies, I realized how selfish I’ve been in fearing them growing up, and in never visualizing our separate futures. That fear is something self-serving. It is my worrying about my need being unfulfilled, instead of a selfless concern for their future and their happiness.

What I realized worried me most is that, in their maturing and needing me less, I am diminished in their eyes, and as a result of that, also diminished in my own eyes. I lose an importance I constructed myself, built possibly out of a need to add significance to my own life. I’ve let it fill gaps. I’ve let it define me. I suppose there are worse things a father could do, but I dislike discovering that I may not have been totally selfless in my motivation to care for them the way that I have.

I’ve often said that the single most gratifying, fulfilling thing I’ve ever done with my life was to rise to the challenge and privilege of being a father. Nothing else gives me more pride, or satisfaction, or sense of purpose.

But, that’s me, and not them. No matter how much it means to me, it is not theirs to share as either a feeling or a burden. My need to be their father is mine. It is also my duty to adjust appropriately in order to best serve them as their father. It has to be secondary to their need to grow, and feel independently strong, and empowered, so they may best face a world that is very challenging within which to find happiness, particularly so for women.

At some point, they must see me less as their father, and more as their equal, and I have to let go the fear and the pride I’ve deeply embedded in the role I so love. To a degree, I think, all that has already started to happen on Megan’s part. She is looking forward and into a future which holds so much promise for her, and will not includeas much, me. She’s already deciding that my job with her is nearly done.

I, on the other hand, have not been ready for that, and so I find myself—once again, and as so often before—running to catch up to her.
   
© 2012 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Balance

Somewhere in our lives, at the point where the lofty trajectories of our hopes, our expectations, and our affections cross, lie our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of those close to us, those whom we love or have loved.

It can be a messy little spot on the map of our lives. It represents a place where we both love and fail each other.

Speaking only for myself, I know I am capable, at times, of taking people I love for granted. I say things to them and I do things to them that I often would not say or do to others. I expect things from them I often would not expect of others.

I also hope they will not take me for granted. I wish, at times, they were not able to say things to me that I never expect to hear from someone I believe loves me. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel that they expect too much from me.

They and I do all of those things to each other because within the binds that tie us we interpret a license to interact with each other in that manner. Be it solely emotional or legal, we see it as a tether that allows us that behavior, assumes a tolerance for it, and obligates us to withstand it without breaking those ties.

For those people in my life outside that personal circle, I can simply dismiss them if I choose. I can choose to not have them in my life by either losing or avoiding contact with them. I can express my disappointment in them and we can say our goodbyes if we cannot realign or come together, or I can quietly withdraw from them without a word. I can even—in today’s world—simply delete them. It can be as simple as that.

But, with those close to me I feel an obligation that translates into a contract fraught with moral, social, emotional, and even psychological complexities. I want their love and appreciation, and I want them to desire the same from me, hopefully at an equivalent level. However, that love and appreciation also comes with strings that can often get a little twisted.  Sometimes those strings tug and cause us harm.

I think I am both fortunate and cursed with the ability to feel intensely, or, as a friend once put it, I have a big heart. Depending on how you see it, that description can be either a compliment or a caution. I see it as an advantage because it allows me a satiating depth with people and things I love and enjoy. But, I know it equally as a curse, because it also affords that same depth of feeling in those people or things that cause me pain.

I am also observant, or at the very least, willing to be observant. I have always been curious about myself, and others, and human nature, and interaction. The upside of that curiosity is that it opens my eyes to things that others might possibly find trivial and mundane and makes them significant to me. The downside: I may not always like what it is I see, or I may see things not really there, or read too much into something.

And like many, I hold on, long and strong, to the memories which have a charge of emotion attached to them, be they pleasant or unpleasant.

Where the unpleasant is concerned, it seems to really stick with me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep an emotional chalkboard where I mentally tally the hurts. I know this of myself, and I try work on it, on the letting go and the erasure of those chalk marks, but it’s never easy. I find I can often forgive, but I cannot as often forget, and I am not sure I am really doing one without doing the other.

The forgetting part is what gets in the way of wiping the slate clean. Even when I try my hardest, the faintly erased marks flash up in memory whenever something resembling their previous scoring erupts in my present. “Here we go again,” I say to myself, and I begin questioning why I ever let myself be put in that same position.

However, I want to be in that exact position, actually, because my desire and need to forgive and forget is rooted in the addiction I have for that feeling forgiveness affords me. I enjoy that feeling of peace, and I appreciate the feeling I get from trying to rise to a selfless act.

It keeps me coming back to that conflicted space of vulnerability. I want the feeling of humility required to suspend my own needs.  I want to give of myself to another, while—at the same time—I fear it and see it as a giant leap of faith. I teeter between the confidence that my leap is taken with, and for, someone that will not make me regret it, and the dread that my faith in the other person, or persons, is foolishly misplaced. Therein lies the rub, because I know going in that those I want to love and trust are, like me, imperfect people.  They are people very capable of failing my expectations and saying, doing, or being someone or something other than what or who I hoped.

In thinking this through, it dawned on me that I may have hit on two of the most important components of an endearing and enduring relationship. When I look around me, those I know who have great relationships are those people who seem to have the desire and ability to be both humble and vulnerable with each other, on a consistent and balanced level.

It is as if those two qualities are the subtle subtexts of their relationship, signaling to each other—sometimes spoken, but most often only reflected—their trust in each other. Each entrusts their feelings to the other, and rewards the returned care of those feelings with reciprocating respect and sheltering. Not much seems necessary to prove to each other, nor does there seem to be any sort of competing or driving ambitions. Nor does one necessarily support or sustain the other disproportionately.

And I think when it fails, or doesn’t even begin to develop, maybe it’s not the failure of one person only, but instead a case where two of most important puzzle pieces are missing. Maybe one person is not solely to blame; it’s more likely that those two people simply fail to inspire those feelings between each other. Neither is a lesser person for it. They are just mismatched.

From what I see in those where it all comes together, it doesn’t seem to me that either person possesses humility or sensitivity as their central or most prominent characteristic, but instead that they each have those as innate abilities drawn out by, and enhanced by, each other. In each other they have found that “sweet spot,” where they are inspired by each other to be a better person, to take the greatest of care with each other’s feelings, and have a consistent desire to sustain and maintain that balance of care, respect, appreciation, and affection for each other.

Maybe that is the nirvana of a great relationship and what people are really referring to when they call something love. I’m not sure. I only know what I see.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.