"This is my son, in whom I am well pleased." –the Lord
Though would it kill him to tidy up his room without having to be asked every time? But like I said, still well pleased, it’s just I'd be slightly MORE pleased if he’d do this one thing -also the Lord
This week led to the culmination of several achievements for my (gulp) 14-year-old son Ethan. He played a solo in “Terracotta Warriors” during his final band concert of middle school, he made a double batch of cookies by himself to deliver to the family room at hospice (to fulfill his community service for school), and he was inducted into the junior honors society.
I’ve watched the clip of his solo repeatedly the past few days. And I’m reminded of the video I got several years ago of him winning a one-mile fun run—I had to really hoof it to keep up with him and capture the moment—which I also watched repeatedly. These moments make my heart swell with pride.
And I got to thinking: what is this pride I feel, as a parent? I’m not personally responsible for his achievements, though of course I encourage and cajole when necessary. So is it really “pride”?
I also don’t think it’s some sort of vicarious living or a projected sense of accomplishment. No, what I feel is more like awed disbelief: this young person, who is doing things and doing them well, exists in large part because of me. He has taken his own life—his sentience and consciousness, in his body comprised of millennia of human relationships, that grew in his particular place in his particular time from one particular chosen human partnership: his father and I—he has taken his life and begun to run with it, to make something uniquely his. How incredible.
But the room thing. I mean, how many empty soda cans can one person have before finally feeling compelled to recycle them? Forget I asked; if he ever finds out, he’d take it as a challenge. Like he has with the ketchup packets collected at lunch and depositing daily in a large basket on his desk at home, which now number in the hundreds.
But like I said: really proud.
Part of what makes it incredible, too, is that you've seen them grow and evolve, from a small unspeaking lizard-creature to something powerful and surprising. That's what I find so amazing about children. We know, as parents, how it's going to turn out, more or less: they're going to learn to walk, they're going to learn to talk, they're going to make friends, acquire skills, learn to read and write, etc, etc. But when it actually starts to happen--when they actually start putting together sentences to convey information or making JOKES, for crissakes--it's absolutely mind-blowing. Like, I just cannot believe my daughter can now talk to me, even though, 'of course' I knew that she would learn how. It's a miracle, made all the more miraculous by how ordinary it is.
Pride is just fine in this case. Wallow in it!