Kids are tough on parents ... 24/7

Kids are tough on parents when they get to that age when all the various dangers life seems to hold are available to them, and we can’t keep an eye on them 24/7

You who have raised your kids to anxiously watch them stumble full-grown out of the nest and into every uncertain day know of which I speak.

Jonathan did his teenage best to see what life was like if you screwed with it, as did so many his age. How close is the edge? How near do I dare stand?

Not at all the wonder of the age--A son not heeding his parents!

Think of it as the pioneering instinct–a decidedly American instinct–"I know I am supposed to turn this way, but what if I turned that way instead?" Taking chances while you’re supposed to be so-called growing up

So parents plod through these years with dread, but with one major hope in mind: That after all the goofing around, they’ll make something of their lives--as though that were the sum total of it all: accounting for one’s self.

But this young man we’re here to remember today wasn’t given the time to sort out what we’re all supposed to sort out about who we are and where we’re going.

So in Jonathan’s case, I say to Steve–and if I could I’d say to Fay:

Look back on those impossible times–those every-parent’s-burden days,

those misgivings about where a boy was going days

and know this:

He was getting it all in--

And instead of remembering them as troubled times,

look back on them joyfully

as having witnessed his spirit kicking loose in the time he knew he had.


Arthur Gatti agatti@nyc.rr.com