The end of summer is already in sight, and for me, it's been a good one, a relaxing, therapeutic break after a long seige of sadness, made sweeter by the tandem triumphs of both daughters. In fact, I have been floating all summer on a happy cloud of maternal pride. I've done little but stand along the sidelines and cheer them on; still, I can't help but feel a flush of vicarious success watching each of my grown-up girls achieve momentous personal and professional goals.
In June, the whole family gathered in Davis, California to watch EK claim her doctor of veterinary medicine degree, the fruit of years of grueling study, punctuated by a number of significant personal challenges. She'd persevered through it all, and now at last she'd achieved her ambitious goal.
It was the great American dream come to life. I thought of my grandparents, Lithuanian immigrants and North Carolina tobacco farmers; my parents, each the first in their families to earn college degrees and a hardwon toehold in the middle-class. It was much the same on Bob's side, shoe salesmen and cafeteria workers sent their children to college and on to solid, respectable lives in education and military service. Bob and I pushed a little further on the education front, each earning a master's degree. And now our daughter was moving far beyond our accomplishments.
It felt right; it felt natural. After all, it's what we expect here in the land of opportunity, the country my Lithuanian grandfather, a bricklayer and shoe factory worker, used to praise with the simple pronouncement, "This is America." Sometimes these days, I am glad Alex Millerskofski isn't here to see how his beloved new world has changed. But this wasn't one of those times. I could only hope that somewhere, he and our other family forerunners were watching this wonderful little American vignette unfold.
Happily, Bob's mother, Mimi to Lauren and EK, was with us to hear the dean introduce her granddaughter as Dr. Erin Kendall Younger, to see her walk across the stage and pause, beaming, as the doctoral hood was lowered over her head, then walk on to accept her diploma from the chancellor of the University of California. All the while those of us in the peanut gallery—Bob, Lauren and I, Mimi, Aunt Terri and Uncle John—clapped and cheered like crazy and wiped away more than a few tears. Look, I whispered to all those watching from beyond. Just look. She's a doctor! That night at dinner, EK made a point of thanking us for our support, and we all raised a glass to those who'd come and gone before us. Those whose love and hard work made our celebration possible. Those who would have loved to be sharing our happiness and no doubt, somewhere just outside our field of perception, were.
My wise and wonderful friend, Martha Bruton, now a grandmother of grown children, called me a few months ago to say, "Sandra, I had a moment." It was in a restaurant over the holidays. She sat down at the end of a long table and looked out at the sight of her entire family--sons, daughter, spouses, grandchildren--all gathered on either side of her. And she thought, “Look. Just look at this family of mine.” Not long after graduation, I called her to say, "Martha, I had a moment, too."
And then came Lauren's moment. After slogging through a debilitating year of personal and career disappointments, not to mention Seattle's perpetual rain and clouds, she'd come close to bailing out of the gloomy Northwest for good, returning home to sunny San Diego and starting over pretty much from scratch. In fact, things looked so dire around the first of this year that we offered our support of that rather drastic decision. But thank goodness Lauren reached down deep, made a few changes in her life and stuck it out a little longer, long enough to experience a total turnaround on every front! The icing on the cake came three weeks ago when her start-up software company was acquired by a big-name tech firm, resulting in all sorts of perks, accolades and positive changes for LL. "Seattle is like a new city to me now," she told me recently. What a great, well-timed and well-deserved reward for her faith, perseverance and resilience. And what beautiful music to a mother's ears.
I wouldn't have believed this 25 years ago, when the girls were baby-faced pre-schoolers, but no matter how old our children may be, how adult, independent and accomplished, mothers are still mothers; fathers, still fathers. We see our progeny as they are, competent and independent adults, but we see them, too, as the babes, the children, the tweens and teens they once were. It all merges together in our minds and hearts, and we love them more and better than ever. We still worry about them when they face tough times. And we still cheer like crazy when they succeed.
Thinking about how beautifully my grown-up girls are meeting the challenges of their own lives, despite the ups and downs they (as everyone) still face, reminds me of a book popular when Bob and I were in college. It was a slim little volume, very new agish for its day, by a Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran, and called “The Prophet.” Thirty years ago, reveling in our own burgeoning independence, the passage we zeroed in on was the prophet’s lecture to parents about the importance of letting their little ones go.
"Your children are not your children," Gibran wrote. "They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."
Now, of course, I identify more with the next few verses:
"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable."
At the time, I’m sure we loved the idea of parents bending to ensure our success. We didn’t notice the part about their gladness. We didn’t much care if they were glad about it or not. We just wanted out from under their scrutiny. But now I get it. Now I know where the gladness comes from. Our children’s success is our success. That’s why parents, like the archer himself, love to see the arrows fly swift and far, finding their marks upon the path of the infinite.
In June, the whole family gathered in Davis, California to watch EK claim her doctor of veterinary medicine degree, the fruit of years of grueling study, punctuated by a number of significant personal challenges. She'd persevered through it all, and now at last she'd achieved her ambitious goal.
It was the great American dream come to life. I thought of my grandparents, Lithuanian immigrants and North Carolina tobacco farmers; my parents, each the first in their families to earn college degrees and a hardwon toehold in the middle-class. It was much the same on Bob's side, shoe salesmen and cafeteria workers sent their children to college and on to solid, respectable lives in education and military service. Bob and I pushed a little further on the education front, each earning a master's degree. And now our daughter was moving far beyond our accomplishments.
It felt right; it felt natural. After all, it's what we expect here in the land of opportunity, the country my Lithuanian grandfather, a bricklayer and shoe factory worker, used to praise with the simple pronouncement, "This is America." Sometimes these days, I am glad Alex Millerskofski isn't here to see how his beloved new world has changed. But this wasn't one of those times. I could only hope that somewhere, he and our other family forerunners were watching this wonderful little American vignette unfold.
Happily, Bob's mother, Mimi to Lauren and EK, was with us to hear the dean introduce her granddaughter as Dr. Erin Kendall Younger, to see her walk across the stage and pause, beaming, as the doctoral hood was lowered over her head, then walk on to accept her diploma from the chancellor of the University of California. All the while those of us in the peanut gallery—Bob, Lauren and I, Mimi, Aunt Terri and Uncle John—clapped and cheered like crazy and wiped away more than a few tears. Look, I whispered to all those watching from beyond. Just look. She's a doctor! That night at dinner, EK made a point of thanking us for our support, and we all raised a glass to those who'd come and gone before us. Those whose love and hard work made our celebration possible. Those who would have loved to be sharing our happiness and no doubt, somewhere just outside our field of perception, were.
My wise and wonderful friend, Martha Bruton, now a grandmother of grown children, called me a few months ago to say, "Sandra, I had a moment." It was in a restaurant over the holidays. She sat down at the end of a long table and looked out at the sight of her entire family--sons, daughter, spouses, grandchildren--all gathered on either side of her. And she thought, “Look. Just look at this family of mine.” Not long after graduation, I called her to say, "Martha, I had a moment, too."
And then came Lauren's moment. After slogging through a debilitating year of personal and career disappointments, not to mention Seattle's perpetual rain and clouds, she'd come close to bailing out of the gloomy Northwest for good, returning home to sunny San Diego and starting over pretty much from scratch. In fact, things looked so dire around the first of this year that we offered our support of that rather drastic decision. But thank goodness Lauren reached down deep, made a few changes in her life and stuck it out a little longer, long enough to experience a total turnaround on every front! The icing on the cake came three weeks ago when her start-up software company was acquired by a big-name tech firm, resulting in all sorts of perks, accolades and positive changes for LL. "Seattle is like a new city to me now," she told me recently. What a great, well-timed and well-deserved reward for her faith, perseverance and resilience. And what beautiful music to a mother's ears.
I wouldn't have believed this 25 years ago, when the girls were baby-faced pre-schoolers, but no matter how old our children may be, how adult, independent and accomplished, mothers are still mothers; fathers, still fathers. We see our progeny as they are, competent and independent adults, but we see them, too, as the babes, the children, the tweens and teens they once were. It all merges together in our minds and hearts, and we love them more and better than ever. We still worry about them when they face tough times. And we still cheer like crazy when they succeed.
Thinking about how beautifully my grown-up girls are meeting the challenges of their own lives, despite the ups and downs they (as everyone) still face, reminds me of a book popular when Bob and I were in college. It was a slim little volume, very new agish for its day, by a Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran, and called “The Prophet.” Thirty years ago, reveling in our own burgeoning independence, the passage we zeroed in on was the prophet’s lecture to parents about the importance of letting their little ones go.
"Your children are not your children," Gibran wrote. "They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."
Now, of course, I identify more with the next few verses:
"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable."
At the time, I’m sure we loved the idea of parents bending to ensure our success. We didn’t notice the part about their gladness. We didn’t much care if they were glad about it or not. We just wanted out from under their scrutiny. But now I get it. Now I know where the gladness comes from. Our children’s success is our success. That’s why parents, like the archer himself, love to see the arrows fly swift and far, finding their marks upon the path of the infinite.
