THERE ARE JOYS IN BEING A PARENT
The other day I watched an interview on the Today Show with a researcher who, through careful scientific research, had concluded that having children does not improve most people’s lives. He hypothesized that human beings keep having children because there is some divinely created denial in our genetic makeup that allows us to repeatedly make this tragic mistake despite the obvious negative impact having children has on our lives.
This comment caused me to reflect on a prior evening where my loving and patient efforts to encourage my son to study his spelling words were met with aggressive defiance. At this time, my 10 year old son informed me that not only was I the worst parent on the planet, but that he hated me along with everything I had ever done and everything I ever thought about doing. Voices rose, doors slammed and I distinctly remembered the moment I stopped and enjoyed the brief fantasy of picking my son up, holding him over my head, and validating his assessment of my parenting skills by forcefully heaving him off the deck. Even when I was sure I was doing everything right to raise my son in a peaceful, supportive, and loving environment, life had flipped my reality, just to see how I would handle it. I did manage to resolve this crisis without the intervention of Children’s Services. When I finally made it to bed that night, I admit that I did take a moment to silently gaze at my wife and secretly question whose idea it really was to have children.
This being said, the following day, I was reminded why I made that frightening decision over ten years ago. I was nearing the end of an exhausting 56-hour work shift, and my mind was calculating how I was going to resolve the current crises in a timely manner that would allow me to complete the two remaining reports sitting on my desk so that I could actually leave work by 10 p.m. when my cell phone rang. This, in itself, was lucky because I had just given up my stubborn vow to keep my guard, my sovereignty, and was actually carrying my cell phone on me and had it turned on. Uncharacteristically, I answered it without checking the caller ID and heard my wife’s voice, which due to the strategic placement of the cell phone tower in the area, was coming through in fractured syllables. She was at my son’s baseball game. He was playing the team coached by his coach from the previous year—the one who vowed to get all the same players on his team this year because they were so good. Well, the coach did get all his players back-- except for my son and another boy. Yes, my son noticed he was one of two who had not returned. He also told his mother that he was going to show the coach that he made a mistake by not picking him. As a rule, I do not try and teach my son that revenge is a positive thing, but in this instance it provided him with a high level of motivation. My son’s team had been down by one run when my son came up to bat with the bases loaded. My wife’s voice went out again for a moment. Then I heard the words “grand slam.” For a brief moment, the stress of the moment was lost in an intoxicating rush of parental pride and joy.
I arrived home around ten thirty that evening. My wife met me at the door and hurried me to my son’s room. He had tried to stay up so he could be the one to tell me, moment by moment, what had happened. However, fatigue had won out. My wife and I woke him and his eyes opened wide for a moment in a false state of alertness. He said, “Dad I hit a grand slam!” And before I could respond, he fell back on his pillow dead asleep. My wife had recorded the event on her cell phone. A little grainy, but you could see the coach call him over and give him a word of advice prior to stepping up to the plate. Ball one, and then came a swing that flew smack up over the second baseman’s head. My son ran toward first and out of the picture. The screaming continued and the camera jiggled. Then I saw my son reappear as he came around third base and slide, not ungracefully, into home. He walked into the dugout and was swarmed by his teammates. Finally, there was a break in the swarm of red hats and my son looked toward his mother with a smile so big and so full of joy that it instantly reminded me that being a parent does provide the most rewarding moments that any life can offer. The next time I think about throwing my son off the deck, I will think of the smile on his face as his teammates hugged him and I’ll remember that redemption is just around the corner. As for the childless commentator hypothesis, he has it all wrong.
