If you love something

We’ve all heard the platitudes about doves and loves: Set them free and if they don’t come back, they were never yours to begin with.

Napoleon Dynamite’s Dove Drawing. Notice the moon. 

Don’t be fooled. This dove looks beautiful but it is looking for crickets to eat.

When I stopped to think about this today while going through some growing pains, I think maybe we as parents do the opposite. We grow-up with our kids. We train them in key things that are important to us and that we believe should be important to them. We invest time and money in them. We love them. And then when we set them free, I think we fully expect that they will not return to us. At least not in the same way we have known them.

Some parents joke about getting kids off the payroll. I would pay anything to keep them close. But that’s not my goal. Nope. Not for me. The goal is to train them in the way they should go; according to their bent; according to their passion and then set them free to continue growing and maturing away from us.

As parents many of us recently had the opportunity to release our kids into the world to return to school. School is an uncertain place in so many ways. I am so very grateful my family made the decision long ago to put our kids in small schools with leadership that has similar beliefs to our own. There are lots of benefits to this, but maybe the most important one is the one we are “unfortunate” to have at this moment – the benefit of a caring staff that looks out for each kid – and especially kids with invisible wounds.

Deb and I have focused our parenting on making capable, confident little humans. We push them to think. We praise them when they do. We ask them to be responsible and respectful and sensitive. But sometimes the best parent for teaching lessons is experience and life. Each of our kids is carrying an invisible wound right now. And each of them deals with it, but in ways that are uniquely theirs.

Ben is maybe the most sensitive to my physical problems, which fits perfectly with his physicality. He’s learning when to exert his Benergy and when to throttle it back. We have adopted a new “Ben-ism” around here as a result of his tenderness with me. He was moving in fast to give me a beeg hug as we both laid on my bed but he stopped short: “Be careful. ‘Cause ‘member, his tube.” We use that phrase now to refer to my diet and other evils. For example, when cake is presented to me as a sugary-good temptation, I can ward it off by saying, “No thanks. ‘Cause member, my tube.”

Will is a mystery. He feels the nagging pull of the situation. But the effects are seldom seen. He has called several times from school to see how I am doing. I used to dread getting a call from “Trinity Episcopal School” because it meant one of three things: trouble, sickness, or low meal balance. Now it might mean I can hear Will’s voice on the other end of the line. So I answer with anticipation of his “Hey Dad. How’re you feeling?” He is learning how to care for others, how to let them know, and how important both things are.

Cate is carrying this a lot like I am: deep inside a locked box. When it shows, it is devastating for a few minutes until we get it under control again. It doesn’t sound healthy but we both come by it naturally. Of course, because she is still going through early life and maturing, and because she is our little girl, her breakdowns are more impactful to Debra and me.

We released Cate to her school this year. But life happens and we had a few tough patches. In each of these scenarios, Debra and I got to see the benefit of a caring staff at a small school. The school staff took Cate under their collective wing and protected her. They let her experience the dust and chaos of the fall, but the recovery, or what really matters, was a display of sympathy and resolution. We are very grateful. In particular Cate’s advisor took up her cause and care and is a light in this fog.

These things resolve and we all move on, stronger and wiser. We get up. We brush off the earth’s marks from our knees and palms. We wash our faces of tears’ stains. And Cate goes back into the fog again but we all know she is cared for and watched.  It helps you know. These extensions of ourselves help us have faith in people. They are there when you need them. We have proof, and we are very grateful for it.

If you want to really release something, release a kid. Watch them fly high out of sight. Feel the anxiety of their falls and your inability to catch them. But then one day, they will fly higher than you ever have before because you have taught them what you know and they launch from it. And when they come back to you it will be as your peer. And best of all, if you’re lucky and have done more important things right than wrong, their love will be freely given whether they are physically with you or not.