Letters to the Editor
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Thankyou Gary
That was beautiful. Every word. Bravo.
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lovely
a simply lovely essay, beautiful and true.
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Is it necessary to say goodbye
I often wonder, as the mother of an 8- and 5-year-old, why it is critical, in America, for our children to grow up and move away from us? If they don't, we act like they're developmentally retarded. But moving away is really very counter-human. Moving away is totally American. In more traditional cultures, indeed, since the dawn of humanity, families stayed together. Kids relied on their parents to help rear their own children so that they could go out and earn money or work in the fields. Now, we move away and that is considered good. Meanwhile, we decry the breakdown of community. We sob over vandalism and crime. But this has everything to do with how we rear our children: go away, don't feel connected, strike out on your own, make your own way. It's bizarre. It's not how I plan to do it. My kids will go to the local university if I can help it. They will work close to home. I will rear their children. I will not expect them to move off, never to hear from them again. They will help me in my old age. This is the way humans are meant to be.
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Terrific imagery for experiences that stretch the limits of language
I enjoyed this piece. It describes a nebulous feeling, but then the nebulous description itself embodies the feeling. It is so simple and gentle that you think you can catch it, but then you realize you are trying to wrap your hands around a sunbeam or a soap bubble. Tonight I saw my daughter at 14 playing in her school's symphonic band concert, the first year that that they sounded confidenct and competenct instead of inexperienced. Beside me, my toddler son sat and grinned at his candy cane, an unexpected treasure fiven to him by one of the older girls in the band. It made his night. I too feel caught between two worlds, Mr. Kamiya. As a fellow parent, your piece touched me and I thank you for constructing a framework for emotions I might have let slide into the fog without consideration.
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Waiting...
...for the inevitable troll LW who moans that letting an 11-year-old persist in belief in Santa is tantamount to child abuse.
C'mon, let's get it over with.
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BettyBoop, I hope you get your wish.
That is what I wished as well. Alas, children often have other ideas.
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This is how I feel about my cats!
Remember when they still had triangle tails? So presh...
(Just kidding. It was a nice essay.)
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BettyBoop, if you love them, set them free ...
Give your kids the skills to survive in our big, bad world. Show them what it is to be loving, caring, and supportive of other people. However, beware lording over them with your expectations. Don't fall into the trap of "do as I say, not as I do." The last two, I heard often, but didn't see much of the first two, so, guess how far I ran. Give your children a chance to test their wings and they may just come back ... which, by the way, is what I hope happens to you.
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Childhood's end
Lovely. Brought tears to my eyes.
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@BettyBoop
Hi Betty,
I live 3 hours from my parents, 20 minutes from my in-laws. It's wonderful to have grandparents who know their grandchildren and are here weekly and for all the various occasions. My kids also have aunts, uncles, and cousins close by. Our babysitters of choice are family. We wouldn't consider taking jobs out of state, even the terrific dream job, and uprooting everyone.
I can't guarantee that my kids will live here when they get older, but I hope they do.
But... if I have a kid who is dead-set on college across the country or the world... I can't and won't stop them. They'll have to make that choice for themselves, where to go, where to live.
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They never really leave, even when they're gone.
Some days I would find myself running all day, a center ref in youth soccer, or driving the Westy back down a mountain from a camp-out, with a son changing from Scout gear into his Little League uniform for a play-off game. Some days it was just dropping them off at school and watching them finally walk away without looking back, comfortable in their own skin, with their independence. They grew up somehow, knowing much more than I did at their age, for good or ill, and became their own persons, but not without a helluva lot of work from us, their parents. Sure they got their rewards, and awards, and had their fun - that's what we worked the hardest for. There's nothing like getting a letter from your young son with a picture he took looking down from the yard-arm of a tall ship, or your other son grinning while handing you an Eagle Scout father's pin.
Some days it seems like they forget that, until my cell phone beeps with a picture of our new month-old grandson, his eyes wide and mouth agape, and my son alluding to "The Scream". We're both laughing. Or my other son telling me "Good one!" when I call him on a road trip and make a "Super Troopers" joke just because I'm parked in front of a Shenanigans - he told me I'd love that movie, and I dutifully watched it....regardless of its merits, just so I might have a connection with him for later.
For later - that's the key, 'cause what my wife and I might remember, the late nights when they were sick, the ER when one broke his leg skiing, the fund-raisers, the endless driving and the clothing expenses, the sheer will to get up early and work late - they won't remember that, they hardly know about it, really, so if they move away for good, we, the four of us who made a family together, will always have those days of their glory.
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That's the way it goes, Gary
You're cruising down the road, taking care of business, and the next thing you know, they are gone. It's strange how at any given moment a person has the sensation of standing still, when in fact even when you are sitting down you are moving at 24,000 miles an hour in the earth's rotation and the earth is moving about 67,000 mph around the Sun (30 km per second) and the Sun circles around our Galaxy at about 250 km per second and our Galaxy is moving relative to the average velocity of the Universe at 600 km per second.
So Gary, while you were reading this, you were thousands of miles away from where you were just a few minutes ago.
And the real hell of it all Gary is that you will never be RIGHT HERE ever again.
Are your parents still alive Gary? Are their parents and their parents too? We are all here so briefly it's not even funny.
The oldest person on earth right now is 114-year-old Edna Parker. There is no one on this planet that was around 115 years ago.
So when it comes to watching your children pass you and speed off into the horizon while you feel yourself slowing down, it's
grief you are feeling. You are grieving as your parents grieved and their parents before them.
I don't mean this in a mean-spirited way Gary, but wait til everyone your age, everyone you grew up with, every slightly older person you knew, starts dying. And they keep dying. Yet, you age, you stay alive. And finally, if you make it far enough down the road, you are the only one left who remembers all that stuff and all those people.
It takes courage to get old. My mother told me that. I never paid much attention when she said it years ago. She's gone now too. Now I understand what she meant.
Latch on to your kids Gary. I don't buy that crap that you "should" let go of them. Never let go. They don't really want you to anyway because that's what love is all about: Staying together.
We'll all be gone soon enough.