Samir Shukla
The springtime rains drench everything, coaxing the flora and fauna into renewal. The explosion of yellows, reds, whites, purples, and myriad shades of greens splash the Southern spring. It’s a sight to behold. The impending arrival of summer teases with warm days and cool nights. The glorious hot, lazy and lethargic days beckon.
The year is incomplete without spending big chunks of summer lazing in swimming pools, skirting river fronts, surfing beaches, or simply biking, hiking, or strolling down the street under a warm sun. As the old song says, “summertime and the livin’ is easy…”
Summer has always been my favorite time of year. I guess one reason is I was born in a part of India where it is essentially summer year round. Summer flows through my veins. Of course spring and fall are lovely in their ways, but summer is a lingering feeling, stacked with lifelong memories.
Winters confound me. Let’s just say I dislike winters. I don’t mind being a little too hot, but I can’t stand to be cold. I don’t care for the world blanketed in winter cold. In summer I cringe when I go into stores, movie theaters, restaurants, friends’ homes where the thermostat is set a little too low. If it feels like wintertime indoors, my skin shrivels and I yearn to feel warm, and if I can leave, I head out the door in protest. A Southern spring is a perfect segue into summer. As another winter fades, slumbering senses awaken.
Here’s a toast, to a dawning new summer.
I held each child shortly after birth. The first child held as a new parent, and then the second child held almost six years later, a little wiser now with hard-learned parental duties from the first one. Each child emerged from the womb and gave the old man a quick smile, hey, dad, I’m here. Well, at least I felt like they did. It’s a moment that defies description. The first child is held firm with inexperience, wonder, anxiety, and sheer joy. The second child is held a bit more relaxed, arms less tense due to the experiences of the first, but still with the same wonder, anxiety and sheer joy.
We look after our children with sleep-deprived alertness and constant vigilance, from the moment they are born. Held tightly in our protective embrace, children change and guide our lives from the day they enter the world. Beginning from conception, nine months in the warmth of a mother to the crying newborn child greeting the world, full of hopes and dreams, our destinies, influence, and choices emerge and push forth as the child begins his life’s journey. Our lives are guided by their needs. We are, essentially, in their hands while they are in our hands.
Raising children is a tightrope bound between unconditional love and thoughtful discipline. It’s an open-ended contract, a lifelong connection of mutual embrace. Once a child comes into one’s life, all else is secondary. The bond begins with that odd shaped blob as seen in an ultrasound and is expanded further with those ever so slight movements in the belly. The bond becomes unbreakable the moment the newborn child is held, warm skin cuddled against warm skin.
The inevitable progression of years marches on and we continue to provide vigilance, support and guard them within a very tight perimeter. Once kids get older, become more independent, increasingly self-aware and worldly, a parent’s task turns to guarding a widening perimeter. It’s a continuing task to make the fences stronger.
When your child is young and he stumbles, you run across the room and pick him up. In the dark of night, you double check the doors and tuck them in. You can shut the curtains, triple check the doors before lights are out for the day, but you can never shut the porous walls of the heart. Children grow and begin to loosen the firm hold you have on their hands, as when they were kids, wanting to dash across the street but your hand held them steady.
A little boy is becoming a man. A little girl is becoming a woman. You can jump up on dad’s back one more time, I’ve found myself whispering those words in my mind over the years. Don’t be in such a rush to grow up. I can still give you a piggyback ride. I say to myself again, a big grin on my face. Of course the years roll on and fatherhood solidifies while the perimeter of security grows bigger.
Most kids invariably become independent. Time passes and their innocence evolves into determined, individual lives. They’re still searching for what they want or what they want to become. Many interests and passions will bloom as they begin to navigate their own lives.
We can guide them along, gently, without diminishing their desires and dreams. We remain their guides for the rest of our lives, but as our children grow they also guide us. Their world views and experiences enhance ours. Our experiences and decisions helped mold them, but they expand our horizons as they grow, learn, and form opinions.
It’s unnerving for some as a child becomes more and more independent, increasingly able to take care of himself. Parents may feel they are not needed as they once were. It is simply life’s progression, and eventually we get a grip on our evolving, changing lives.
So, now, as the children have either become or are very close to becoming independent adults, the task turns into expanding the perimeter. They will stumble, much as we did even after entering adulthood, but they will get up, dust off the stumbling blocks and continue moving.
As our son graduates from college this month, leaping into the world with fresh passions and paths yet undiscovered, and our daughter dives into life on the other side of sweet 16, I ponder their lessening dependency and expand the imaginary perimeter. We have helped them grasp the realities of life, acquire abilities to traverse the world and seek opportunities.
Now, guarding the widest perimeter, one spanning the far reaches of their lives and the greater world, lending a hand or advice when needed, has become the parental calling.
