Fred Fergusen is getting along in years, is a father of three fine grown-up children, and has a lot of reasons to feel good about the job he did fathering them. But every now and then he gets smitten by a notion that he has let his children down.
It is hard for him to put his finger on what it was he failed at. He remembers moments when he lost his temper, like the time in the station wagon, after a long, hot day of driving: he couldn't find the camping site where the Auto Club map said one was supposed to be, the kids got silly and he blew up. Mostly, though, he just remembers personal qualities he didn't have, and wished he had had, like a sense of humor, or more patience and understanding, or enough character to inspire his children to look up to him and want to be like him.
He knows his feelings are out of line with reality. Whatever it was he failed at, his failures look like the marks of ordinary humanity, and they could not have hurt his children much. All three of them are really doing OK, not stars, but responsible adults, plowing their own furrows through the fields they either choose for themselves or drifted into, holding down steady jobs and, all in all, doing all the right at being decent human beings in a world that is not as decent as they.
And yet he has this stubborn sense that he failed to keep his commitment to the people in his life who needed him most.
I think I can understand Fred, because I have had the same feelings he has, unspecific, blurred disquiet at not having done as a job at being a father as I ought to have done. Other parents tell me they have the same feelings. In fact, the more serious they are about their commitment to their children, the harder they seem to judge themselves. Not much wonder either; taking on the job of bringing up children is a huge, lumpy commitment that has few precise terms. How could we expect to feel sure we have kept our commitment well?
The object of this chapter is to put parental commitment into simple, elemental terms: what kind of commitment does a parent make to a child?
I am not talking about the promises that some privileged parents make to their privileged children. College tuition in the bank by the time the child is seventeen. A trust fund, divided equally. A nice spot in the family business. These are options; you can choose them if you happen to be well enough off to commit yourself to them.
I am talking about the commitment that comes as standard equipment with parenting. The kind that matches the job description that comes with taking a child into our care and calling her-or- him-our own, no matter how the child happens to arrive. I will be unwrapping, one by one, the essential components lie in the minds and hearts of the parents who make the commitment. Then come five things that parents commit themselves to do for their children.
Any thought's?
Hari
Enjoy reading...Blessing
Nice article dude