This week my eldest son turned 29. On the fifteenth my younger son turns 27. Due to a messy separation and divorce, I ended up not raising them, and I hardly ever hear from them. It's sad.

But I'm not here to dwell on sadness. My daughter will be turning 10 in November. She is at once the greatest joy and the greatest challenge in my life. I thought about naming her Consolata because of the difference she has made in our lives. Instead I named her Megan Rose in honor of my grandmothers.

Megan enlarges my existence. Seasons and holidays take on different meanings when you celebrate them with a child. You point out the colors of the fall leaves, watch stories on television and in the movies that have happy endings, share the anticipation of Christmas Eve and give in to "Can I open just one present tonight, Mom?" It is refreshing to step outside of myself and see things from her perspective.

Megan is musical. She loves to sing along with the Disney songs and with groups like Zoe Girl and Point of Grace. She sings along with the oldies that I listen to. She particularly likes Diana Ross. She listens with her Dad to country music and enjoys Shania Twain and Sheryl Crow. She wants to be a singer when she grows up.

Megan has recently begun violin lessons. Parents are invited to sit in and even audit the class if they would like, so I am renting a violin and learning right beside her.

Friends mean more to Megan than anything else. She shares their feelings, and she sticks up for them if other kids give them a hard time. Fairness is very important to her, and I see a real nurturing quality within her.

I feel there is hope for the future because of Megan and children like her.


What does parenthood mean to you? How has it changed you?

Children bring such magic to the house. Holidays are experienced again through a child's eyes. The world is a new, exciting place....even bugs are fascinating again! I sometimes chase bunnies and birds for an hour in the park. I set out birdfeeders to hear my youngest point and exclaim, "bur!" Everyday becomes more fulfilling and extended , yet the weeks and months seem to pass by in a mere instant.

My children make me a better person. I am kinder and more considerate because I know they are watching and learning from me. I use better language too.

My children make me think beyond myself. I am simultaneously made aware of my mortality, but understand that my life is very far from the most important of things.

My children make me think in the long term. I appreciate family connections more than ever before, and I look towards the future rather than the immediate, at the same time appreciating the immediate more than I ever could have before children.

I empathize more with others, and I feel a connection to other parents. That is one of the primary bonding empathic forces in this world. Everyone loves their children.

Thanks, Mrs. P.

I identify with all of what you wrote. You actually expressed my feelings about parenthood much better than I did.

I suspect Paladin Elspeth started this thread in part, so that I would eventually post an answer to a question I haven't been able to answer spontaneously. Having been a parent some 37 years now, it is hard to remember when I was not...

I can remember crossing the bridge over the river on my way home from work, and pausing to watch the river flow. I can remember looking from the blockhouse here in Muskegon, and marveling at how uniform the tops of the trees looked. (Four decades later, that view is now blocked by the forest.) I can remember watching a colony of ants for hours at a time. I can remember spending days wandering around from store to store trying to stretch a couple of dollars to buy Christmas presents and wrapping paper.

I can remember answering the phone at 3 AM sometime in October to hear, "I'm pregnant..."

I had been reading a story at the time, (Steinbeck perhaps?) and a line from the story has stuck in my mind; "A boy becomes a man only when there is a need for him to become a man." I thought at the time, "It looks like that time has come."

College was no longer the priority it had been. Finding a job became the top priority. A wedding date was set. A church and a minister were located. I tried to invite my two best friends to the wedding. All three of us had independently set the same wedding date, for the same reason.

One of those friends sent me a Christmas card in June which my wife read to me, "The son of God is born today." Months later my father mentioned how upset he was, that I had not responded to the birth announcements he had sent out. I searched out the Christmas Card which my wife had read to me, then put away with the Christmas things. The baby's name, date of birth, weight, length, etc. were all listed. I haven't heard from him in 37 years.

My baby was born. Suddenly, I understood how every baby born can be seen as the potential next Messiah. It was overwhelming what potential lay in those few pounds. I watched one day as she lay asleep in her playpen with the sun from the window playing hide and seek with the clouds, and I wrote down all that I was feeling, all the warmth, all the amazement... I tucked it into an envelope and I mailed it to my other best friend, the one who a week before we were to be married to other people, told me; "If you'd ever learned my name, I probably would be marrying you." The mailman picked up my letter, and left hers. Her baby had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. My wife would not let me phone her and extend my sympathies, she was angry that I had even written one letter to her; there was no way I would be allowed to follow up with a second letter... It's been 37 years now that I have not known how to reach her, and express how I felt about her loss.

Every time that I went to wake the baby up for some reason, I whistled the same bird call. I had enjoyed waking to the sound of Whip-or-wills at summer camp. One morning, she climbed out of bed and came running when I whistled. For the next 20 years, she came every time that I whistled.

My second daughter, born five years later came to a different whistle. For some reason, she was nicknamed "Pooh Bear" at birth, and I found a whistle that sounded like that to me.

Neither girl ever learned to come when called by name, but never failed to come when I whistled. It drove my first wife nuts.

Paladin Elspeth whistles much the same as I do, and our daughter comes running to the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth symphony.

I worked very hard for years, trying to make ends meet. My youngest daughter has been after me for years to relax and learn how to play. I call her "coach" and she reminds me every so often that I need to smell the roses, pet the cat, and try to learn to throw a basketball through a hoop. She has been more persistent than anyone I have ever known in trying to teach me to hit a ball with a bat. She has reminded me that I once knew how to use a yo-yo, but I have never got her interested in playing cat's cradle. She has listened to my stories of my childhood, thinks that I never really had one, and wants to make certain that I get one now that I am retired.

Being a parent is an awesome responsibility. I remember sitting on the porch next door in 1967, listening as a mother explained why she had beaten her child to death, and asked me "What do I do now?" I have often joked that January 4, 1976 was the worst year of my life. Among the other events of that day, I found myself sitting across the street with the daughter of a good friend and her husband, after her father's house had caught fire. "I suppose I should go check on the children." The house caught fire a second time that night before she woke them up and took them out of the house. A week later, they burned to death when their mobile home caught fire. She was charged with arson, and two counts of felony murder. The police wanted me as a witness. I knew a 2 year old who hid her mother's car keys, and then told her mother she was too drunk to drive. "If I could have seen her, I would have spanked her, so I suspect she was right."

I have really heard nothing of my two oldest daughters for sixteen years now. If I can believe my mother, she told them some horrendous lies while I was divorcing my first wife. Perhaps this is a way of whispering to the wind, "I love you." Who knows, they might be surfing the net and read this. If you can; talk to your parents, and talk to your children. Talk to your friends. Thirty-seven hours was too long to wait. Maybe next year I'll actually get invited to my high school reunion, and I can look for those old friends. It's only been 39 years without hearing from anyone at that school about a reunion.