When, at the age of 30, I became a parent, I felt
prepared. It wasn’t so much that I knew
what to do, but what NOT to do. I had a
role model in that regard – a female friend I hung out with in my early 20s. I had always enjoyed her company ... and then
she became a parent. Immediately, her
entire perspective on life changed.
Everything in her universe revolved around her child. That kid became her alpha and omega. Cute.
Adorable. Scintillating. Not since “God” has someone been treated as
so omni-excellent.
Candidly, my friend bored me to death. I couldn’t have cared less about her baby,
but that baby was the only thing she wanted to talk about. From then on, I determined that if I were ever
fortunate enough to have children, I would live my life and they would live
theirs.
Once parenthood happened, I realized that my
resolution was a bit extreme. Who doesn’t
want to leave their mark on their own children?
And who doesn’t feel wiser than a four-year-old or for that matter a
14-year-old when it comes to making responsible choices? So
yes, I tried to exercise some control over the lives of my kids. But I remained determined not to let them control
mine. Most specifically, I didn’t want
them to monopolize my interests. I still
wanted to live my life as an independent adult who realized that there are few
topics more boring than somebody else’s kids, so I tried not to talk about my
daughters too much to other people. And
frankly, I realized that the best way to raise interesting children is to model
what it means to be an interesting adult, rather than simply parent your
children 24 hours a day.
That realization hit me even harder as my children
grew up. We raised them, you see, in the
affluent, status-conscious Petri Dish known as Bethesda, Maryland. Now I noticed a new set of child-obsessed
adults. This time they weren’t talking about
how adorable little Johnny was in the way he drooled down his face. They were fixated instead on little William’s
excellent grades, or his exploits on the soccer pitch, or on whatever other
ways he could become the Bethesda equivalent of a “Made Man.” (I’m talking about getting into an elite
college, what else?) The piece de
resistance was when my kids enrolled in the County’s Magnet International Baccalaureate
program. It sounded to me like some of
these mothers would sit next to their kids, year after year, and check their
homework on a daily basis – from arithmetic, to algebra, to geometry, to
trigonometry, to calculus, to ordinary differential equations.... I say this because I’d have to watch the crème
de la crème of these parents launch Jeremiads at the heads of the IB program complaining
that the school didn’t offer math classes advanced enough for the kids’
capacious minds. This was a public
school, and yet some of these parents were still outraged. How is your kid supposed to get the jump on
his classmates at MIT if he isn’t being challenged in high school?
Thanks to these role models on how not to parent, I
got through that stage of life well enough.
My kids grew up, warts and all, and I entered middle age without developing
a child-centric view of the universe.
Then, a few months ago, something happened for which I was ill-prepared:
I became a grandparent. The problem,
obviously, was that I lacked negative role models. I didn’t recall any grandparents who had
driven me crazy in that role. In fact,
every time I had noticed grandparents in the past, they were either ignoring
their grandkids (their loss) or were loving them in a healthy way. I never saw the kind of obsessive, obnoxious
behavior that has so often come to characterize what happens to perfectly
pleasant adults when they become parents.
Lacking the proper role models, I just winged
it. And the first thing I noticed was
that I was starting to take on some of those same “Isn’t my baby’s drool cute?”
behaviors that turned me off back in the early ‘80s. You
can’t possibly convince me that there is a baby alive who is one-hundredth as
cute, adorable or scintillating as my grandson.
And yes, I know that I’m being an idiot for thinking that way, but it’s
not my fault. Grandparenthood snuck up
on me.
The thing is, though, feeling that way about your
grandkids is harmless because you don’t see them enough to obsess over them. You dote over them, they make you smile, you
make them smile, and then you go to your home and they go to theirs -- for
days, or weeks, or (in the case of some families) months at a time. This relationship is truly blessed because it
always leaves everyone wanting more. And
there is enough distance and freedom baked into the cake that neither side is
overwhelmed with too much guilt, dread, sense of responsibility, or any of
those other feelings that prevent parenthood from being pure joy.
Grandparenthood, from what I can tell, is pure
joy. And it is one of the very few
things in life that can meet that standard.
Another candidate that comes close is dog ownership. And let me tell you, if you really want to
have a good time, get your baby grandson together with your dog and watch them
interact. Now THAT is truly cute,
adorable and scintillating. But it does
come to an end soon enough. Either the
baby or the dog gets bored. And when
that happens, an independent-minded grandfather like me can stop focusing on
those beautiful little creatures and think instead about other topics. Like the fact that the former wife of uber-progressive
California politician Gavin Newsom is now dating Donald Trump, Jr. (that’s just
weird). Or the fact that at the same
time Jr’s father is obsessing about “rats” who are six-feet tall, the President’s
city is literally being overrun by rats that are eating our garbage and
carrying disease (DC is now the second most rat-infested city in America, with
over 700 complaints for every 100,000 residents). Or the fact that our nation is now
considering relaxing restrictions on dirty coal plants (because, after all, the
one thing that has held America back from being great again is the lack of
toxins in the air).
Yes, my friends, there are too many interesting things
going on in the world to justify obsessing about any one topic. And there really is no topic less interesting
than someone else’s kids.
But don’t tell me that your grandkid is half as
adorable as my baby Julius. I simply can’t
believe that. My rationalism doesn’t
extend that far.
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