This past weekend was one of major milestones for my family and
me
– good and not so good. Friday, I was in Mill Valley to support
my mother and father while my mom had a mastectomy. Saturday, I
returned home to attend my son’s high school graduation.
This past weekend was one of major milestones for my family and me – good and not so good. Friday, I was in Mill Valley to support my mother and father while my mom had a mastectomy. Saturday, I returned home to attend my son’s high school graduation.
Neither of these events is earth shattering, I grant you. My mother, like my father, is 85-years-old and as strong as an ox. The cancer in her breast was not life threatening and she will recover fully from it. But nevertheless, when doctors start cutting off parts of your body, you sit up and take notice.
Graduating from high school is not a monumental achievement, but it is a watershed moment in a person’s life. As was noted at the ceremony, graduation is called a commencement because its real importance is to mark the beginning of a greater personal responsibility, not to give congratulations for an achievement. For the first time, most of those young graduates will start making choices without constant parental oversight.
But these two milestones, marking opposite ends of life and so closely juxtaposed, made an impression on me. For my mom, her operation Friday underscores that her sun is slowly (hopefully) descending toward the horizon, while my son’s life is just beginning in earnest. What will he choose? What will he become?
Most of us spend very little time taking stock. We are busy with the basics: get up, shower, shave, go to work – try to build a good life for you and your family. But this weekend pulled my focus back from telephoto to wide angle. In particular, I thought of the gifts that my parents have given me. The greatest one is so simple, but as I have grown older, I realize it is also precious.
The silly way I usually characterize it is to say that if I were to write my biography, it would only be a pamphlet, and even then, it would put people to sleep. This simplicity may strike some people as a bad thing, lacking interest and excitement. But it seems to me that many people with an ”interesting” story to tell are fighting internal demons. The Dr. Phil show, the Oprah show and their kin feature troubled souls who spend their lifetime trying to please their father who never gave them approval, or their mother who pushed, pushed, pushed. Many people who attained fame and fortune were driven there by some compulsion that they were powerless to ignore. Whether it drives one to heights or depths, I don’t want to give my choices over to a force I can’t control.
None of us is wholly free of baggage, but my parents have given me, for the most part, the ability to choose freely and without compulsion. Thanks to them, I am not relegated to a lifetime of dealing with ghosts in the closet. I think these ghosts are part of why people divorce their spouse for a younger partner, or abuse their children, or seek refuge in drugs.
So, thanks Mom and Dad for giving me an untarnished slate from which to evaluate my options in life. It may sound boring to some, but I regard it as your greatest gift to me. From now on, my son Drew will shape his own life. Did we do as good of a job? I hope his view of the future is a bright unobstructed path to wherever he chooses to go.
