When There Are Things I Want to Tell You
I drive on the highway through a thunderstorm to pick one of you up at work, one of you six children we’re trying to raise, and in the midst of the crashing thunder and piercing lightning, I keep having these thoughts, these flashes of ideas that I want to tell all six of you. Things about life you need to know. Important things.
Maybe these things come to my mind more often now because I’m three and a half years away from fifty. Maybe it’s because one of you just turned 20 and two of you will be in college next year. Whatever the case, I’m overwhelmed by this feeling that I’m not preparing you as well as I could, that there’s still so much more you need to know and learn.
A tractor-trailer flies past, leaving me in it’s hard-driving wake, and I’m nearly washed off the road. I think of all the things I wanted to do differently (perfectly?) as a parent, ways I’ve failed, things I wish could do over again. I make a mental list of three things I will tell you all at our next family dinner, three things that, if you can just absorb them, will keep you from needless pain and misery.
But then more things come to mind, things we’ve never talked about.
Where do I even begin?
Being a parent means continually facing my imperfections, my shortcomings. Being a parent is looking in the mirror every day and wondering how I, just a kid myself, can be responsible for the lives of others.
When we walked out of the hospital with our oldest child, him newly born, I remember looking around, waiting for someone to walk up to me and say, Nice try, buddy, but you’re not qualified for this.
But no one did that. No one took him from us. No SWAT team came rushing out of the shadows to save him. And we drove away, an entire universe properly strapped into the baby seat behind us.
This happened five more times, and each time I wondered, When will they realize I’m not qualified for this?
I’m home now, and we’re all a mass of chaotic humanity gathering for dinner, setting the table, Mai finishing up the food, the rain still coming down outside, pouring from the corners of the house. The place smells of sweet corn and hot applesauce and cooked veggies. The thunder rolls.
We sit down, and I cannot remember a single one of the things I wanted to explain to you. My well-rehearsed batch of advice and wisdom has vanished into the ether. And I wonder, even if could remember it, what does a simple telling do? If it was that easy, if living a good life came down to obtaining the right information, there would be a computer program for it, and we would sit you down and download into your brain everything you need to know.
The plates clang together. We sing our prayer. Sixteen arms and sixteen hands begin reaching and gathering and eating.
There we are, all eight of us, chatting and laughing and shouting and picking on each other, eating and telling stories and amazed that she hasn’t read The Giver or that he can’t get into Harry Potter or that he doesn’t like the sweet corn. Winnie is under the table waiting for scraps to fall and outside the rain keeps thundering down, yet the house is dry and cool in the middle of summer.
We follow a trail of reminiscence, talking about one of the old houses where we used to live. Some crazy thing one of you did. How Abra found the eggs and Sam used to say, “Show yourself, Red Rackham!” What funny things each of you said and how those moments of humor fit into the annals of Smucker lore.
And I just sit there, listening. I stare at each of you, taking in your features, your laugh, the part you play in this family. You are becoming pieces of each other, though you do not see it happening. We are all becoming that, so that in life or death we will always be this intermingled mixture of each other. And yet each our own as well.
I still cannot remember all that I wanted to say, but I wonder if maybe love is where it all begins, here around the table, the thunderstorm dying, fading off into the east.
So beautiful. I've been having similar ponderings, though you've written it much better than I've thought it. My kids are still quite young compared to yours, and when I imagine what it'll be like to get to the stage of teenagers and empty nesting, I'm terrified. Terrified at how wonderful it could be, and how many heartbreaks I'll experience. All those mistakes that I have made and how much more I will make before I get there. Please keep writing about it.
Our oldest turned 9 yesterday. Sometimes I just sit and look at these beautiful people and wonder, whose bright idea it was to make me a parent? Surely I am not qualified. I already know so much less than when I started. But as you capture, maybe it’s our presence and not the knowing that matters most.