Just the Way You Are

"I said I love you and that's forever
And this I promise from my heart
I couldn't love you any better
I love you just the way you are."
["Just the Way You Are", Billy Joel] 

What is Love?

Liza-Ann asked me today if I could remember at what point in the past I first looked at Olivia and felt I loved her.  Liza-Ann and I got together when Olivia was just turning one, so clearly there was a time when I wouldn't have characterized my relationship with our child that way.  I can't recall at what point I would have.  I know in the past I've written a little about parenting, such as back when I wrote "Year Six", about finally starting to feel like I was no longer an 'unlicensed technician'.  I know I loved her then.  Even if I wasn't saying so explicitly, I can read between the lines of what I wrote and I know how I felt at the time.  It was probably some time around age 3 or 4.  I have a poor memory and it's so second-nature to me nowadays, I find it hard to think back to a time when I didn't feel that way.

I've been thinking a lot lately about family and parenting.  I've asked myself other, similar questions, and had other interesting self-discoveries.

For instance, a little while ago I wrote about 'being the arrow and not the bow'.  I remember when I first came to terms with that idea.  I was thinking about it recently when I wrote about fear, and what it's like to feel fearful about your child's future.  I recall one of the first times I felt the true despair that only a parent can, at the realization that there is only so much you can do to shelter your child from the tragedies of life and of the world.  I recall The Great Smencil Incident.  I could have sworn I'd written of it before, but a search of my blog did not turn it up.  A quick synopsis is in order.

The Smencil Incident

One day many years ago, when I dropped Olivia at school, in maybe Grade 1 or 2, she brought with her a smencil, a scented pencil.  It's a silly thing, really, but she was at "the superlative age" where each new toy, each new item, was THE BEST THING EVER, and the slightest misfortune THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED.  She was very excited to bring her smencil to school and show her friends.

At the end of the day, when I picked her up from school, she was in tears.  There was no more smencil.  At lunch, while running around outside, she lost it.  She realized immediately where she must have dropped it and quickly retraced her steps, only to find a much older child standing there holding the smencil.  She insisted it was hers and tried to reclaim it, but the other child insisted it was their own, and with no markings or such to demonstrate ownership, she wasn't able to convince them to concede the item.  As I drove home, listening to her sadly recount the incident from the back seat between sniffles, I struggled to keep from crying myself, overcome by the realization that there would be many such moments as this in her lifetime.  It felt like the weight of the world crushing down on me.  It was the shot across the bow.  The world can be cruel, and while I can do whatever I can to prepare my child to face it... I am the bow, not the arrow.  In a day or two, she was over the smencil and on to the next BEST THING EVER.  Someday I'm sure I'll move past it too.

Another Interesting Question

A different, but equally interesting question as Liza-Ann's, I think, is one I asked myself in my head this morning.

At what point did I start thinking of Olivia as our child?  You see, when I read between the lines of Year Six and my thoughts on being an 'unlicensed technician' as a step-parent, I may have come to terms with the fact that I was a parent, but that doesn't mean I thought of Olivia as mine.  I think for a long time after, I still thought of myself as "helping raise someone else's child".  Yet recently, I heard myself using terms like "our child", an expression I probably wouldn't have used years ago, as if, even accepting my responsibility as a parent, I still didn't feel as though I had a right to claim any responsibility for the outcome.  

But when I look, now, I see bits and pieces, expressions and habits learned from me, both good and bad, and know I had a hand in shaping this marvelous person I so very much love.

Are there other interesting questions?  Are there other "levels" or measures of love, acceptance, and parent-ship?  Are there lines I've not yet reached and crossed?

I do love the way these things just happen and one day I realize, and look back, and can't tell when.

Providence

In my teens, twenties, and possibly thirties, I tended to think of my family as "friends I didn't choose", and at times, maybe even as "friends I'd not have otherwise met and chosen".  I may have liked to think of myself a "a good friend" and "a good boyfriend", but "a good brother" never much crossed my mind or factored into my sense of self.

Over the past number of years, I've grown a much more acute appreciation for family, and things have changed.  I'm not sure if is is simply that my opinions have changed, if the people in question have, or if I am somehow fundamentally different as a person.  Perhaps it's all of these things.  Perhaps by becoming a parent and having a little family of my own has enlightened me to what I was simply "not getting".  I do know these relationships and how I feel about them have become different now, even if not for them, most certainly for me.

I feel closer to my siblings than in the past.  Have our advancing years put on us on more even footing in life experience?  Have our shared experiences of parenting given us more in common, to where I can more readily relate to them?  Or is it merely time playing tricks on me, as the rivers flow together and apart, meandering through the forests of time?  Who is to say?  It doesn't really matter.  Instead, I embrace this notion, this feeling, that perhaps after all these years, I'm finally starting to gain a deeper appreciation for family than I've had in the past.  I understand the value.

Oddly, I think that understanding comes, in many ways, from the waxing and waning of friendships.  As friends and I move closer together or farther apart, I contemplate quite often something an acquaintance said to me when I was 18:  'Paddy, you may have plenty of friends now, but trust me:  When you get older, at any given time, you'll only ever really have one 'best friend' at a time.'  For a quarter-century, that line pops into my head every time I consider the shifting nature of relationships with friends.  I routinely denounce the idea, re-affirming for myself that I have, and always have had, more than one 'best friend' at a time, more than one person I could easily trust with all my secrets.

But it's made me see the value of family in a different light; no longer are they "the friends I didn't chose" so much as "the friends I will always have".  Through thick or thin, I can always count them among my friends.  I can always count on them for love, understanding, and support.

Perhaps, 28 years after I stopped being Catholic, I finally understand the point of The Prodigal Son.

Sure, we're all pretty different.  Sure, we don't always get along.

But in the same way I love Liza-Ann and our child... I love the rest of my family just the way they are.