Wednesday
Then: My Kids
All parents naturally tell themselves – and sometimes others – that they have absolutely outstanding children. But I suspect rarely is this supposition put to a truer test than with a parent’s health crisis or other personal trauma.
When I think about the equal, but very different, support and comfort I received from my two kids, and put their two roles together, I simply can’t imagine having any kind of good outcome without them.
I’m nervous about what I write here because I know they are still young and developing their egos. And nothing is more vital to a child than trying to determine their pecking order in the love from their parents. I’m afraid that whatever I write, whenever either of them reads this, they’ll look for that order. So, I’ll come right out and tell them here on this page: you each were equal pillars propping up your weak old dad and making him stronger.
When my (now 19-year-old) son Mark finds his gift in the future, many people are going to benefit from this young man. Whereas my (now 15-year-old) daughter Jessie has a psychic gift, my son has the gift of intuition about people’s cares and pains like no one I’ve ever met.
My daughter inherited my passion for creative pursuits, but where her quiet ‘center’ of knowing comes from, I do not know. I just know we are peas in a pod.
My son’s gift – when applied to my situation -- for a time was a curse on him as other things swirled about in the complicated life of a 16-year old boy. He could intuit that my wife and I were on edge, but he couldn’t get the truth out of us. For one thing, we really never knew the truth to share with him.
Where my son’s gift shone, and where he felt less helpless, was post-surgery for the two weeks I had to wear the catheter. Sleeping was a problem. You have a dangling rubber hose that needs to connect to a 12-inch round collection bag at night with the bag beside the bed resting in a wastebasket because of how bloated it becomes. There are Velcro straps, and other stuff to manage all this. And add to that the wings. Two little two-inch wide plastic squeeze bulbs somehow attached to each side of your belly button area with drainage tubes extending into your body at a depth I still don’t even want to think about. The fluid collecting in the bulbs is another topic needing no description.
My son, with his gift of invention, figured out this Rube Goldberg apparatus in relation to how I liked to sleep and he did his job admirably each night in equipping and positioning me for bed.
Now my daughter, when I look at her and listen to her create a story or hatch an idea, I see myself at the same age. Creativity. That’s what life is about. Have no fear. Care not about anything negative, or any possible less than ideal scenario.
What gave me strength in my daughter was her unspoken optimism at the core of her being. I could tell from her face, her expressions and words, and even the thought of her when not around: She knows something. She said little and asked little throughout. But what I knew was that this child was prescient and had already concluded that I would emerge with an excellent outcome.
I have marveled at some of Jessie’s flashes of a psychic gift. Once outside my childhood home in Iowa, an 8-year-old Jessie suddenly ran over and hugged me in fear because of a feeling when glancing at the house across the street of ‘dead people.’ And this was before the movie The Sixth Sense. She was right. There had been two deaths of the mother and father of the girl who lived there.
Many friends have told similar stories of psychic flashes by their kids around this same age, a time when a child emerges from the bonds of parents and begins to learn the lessons of living in our culture. Unfortunately, those life lessons teach our youngsters to snuff notions that they can sense the unseen. I only wish
that there was theory and practice of nurturing a gift like Jessie’s. What there is in this realm mostly seems to come from the wackido world.
I still take a lot of comfort from memories that Jessie knew better than anyone what was to come. She didn’t realize it, or verbalize it. She just knew. ¶ 1:53 PM
When I think about the equal, but very different, support and comfort I received from my two kids, and put their two roles together, I simply can’t imagine having any kind of good outcome without them.
I’m nervous about what I write here because I know they are still young and developing their egos. And nothing is more vital to a child than trying to determine their pecking order in the love from their parents. I’m afraid that whatever I write, whenever either of them reads this, they’ll look for that order. So, I’ll come right out and tell them here on this page: you each were equal pillars propping up your weak old dad and making him stronger.
When my (now 19-year-old) son Mark finds his gift in the future, many people are going to benefit from this young man. Whereas my (now 15-year-old) daughter Jessie has a psychic gift, my son has the gift of intuition about people’s cares and pains like no one I’ve ever met.
My daughter inherited my passion for creative pursuits, but where her quiet ‘center’ of knowing comes from, I do not know. I just know we are peas in a pod.
My son’s gift – when applied to my situation -- for a time was a curse on him as other things swirled about in the complicated life of a 16-year old boy. He could intuit that my wife and I were on edge, but he couldn’t get the truth out of us. For one thing, we really never knew the truth to share with him.
Where my son’s gift shone, and where he felt less helpless, was post-surgery for the two weeks I had to wear the catheter. Sleeping was a problem. You have a dangling rubber hose that needs to connect to a 12-inch round collection bag at night with the bag beside the bed resting in a wastebasket because of how bloated it becomes. There are Velcro straps, and other stuff to manage all this. And add to that the wings. Two little two-inch wide plastic squeeze bulbs somehow attached to each side of your belly button area with drainage tubes extending into your body at a depth I still don’t even want to think about. The fluid collecting in the bulbs is another topic needing no description.
My son, with his gift of invention, figured out this Rube Goldberg apparatus in relation to how I liked to sleep and he did his job admirably each night in equipping and positioning me for bed.
Now my daughter, when I look at her and listen to her create a story or hatch an idea, I see myself at the same age. Creativity. That’s what life is about. Have no fear. Care not about anything negative, or any possible less than ideal scenario.
What gave me strength in my daughter was her unspoken optimism at the core of her being. I could tell from her face, her expressions and words, and even the thought of her when not around: She knows something. She said little and asked little throughout. But what I knew was that this child was prescient and had already concluded that I would emerge with an excellent outcome.
I have marveled at some of Jessie’s flashes of a psychic gift. Once outside my childhood home in Iowa, an 8-year-old Jessie suddenly ran over and hugged me in fear because of a feeling when glancing at the house across the street of ‘dead people.’ And this was before the movie The Sixth Sense. She was right. There had been two deaths of the mother and father of the girl who lived there.
Many friends have told similar stories of psychic flashes by their kids around this same age, a time when a child emerges from the bonds of parents and begins to learn the lessons of living in our culture. Unfortunately, those life lessons teach our youngsters to snuff notions that they can sense the unseen. I only wish
that there was theory and practice of nurturing a gift like Jessie’s. What there is in this realm mostly seems to come from the wackido world.
I still take a lot of comfort from memories that Jessie knew better than anyone what was to come. She didn’t realize it, or verbalize it. She just knew. ¶ 1:53 PM
