Extensions of self

Something ubermunkey wrote about his daughter reminded me how much I'm affected by my daughters' joy. I would hardly think twice about driving half an hour to take Brenna to St. Jacobs market, remembering the way her eyes lit up the first time she saw a big pickle-on-a-stick. That light tugs me the way nothing else can, not even romantic love.

We bought and watched What Dreams May Come, a favourite of mine when it came out in the theatres. It seems overly sentimental now, and those unusual special effects seem less effective on a TV screen. But it's still one of the more innovative and beautiful movies to come out of Hollywood during the Nineties. And it touches on the theme of family relationships, how parents long to make their children happy, how children long to make their parents happy, and how easily we set ourselves up for disappointment. The thesis seems to be, we must never give up on those we love, and yet sometimes we must give up. Life and death make that much sense.

As I've told my daughters before, I don't care whether they become lawyers or street buskers, my greatest hope for them is their happiness. Of course nothing I do can guarantee that. One of the most important things I can give, perhaps my highest ambition in life, is to be happy myself. Not to strive for what consumer culture tells us will bring pleasure in some ill-defined future paradise (something like heaven on earth), but to practice happiness in the broken, imperfect present. No matter how much trouble comes, our state of mind is what we make it.

The most important lesson I ever learned about parenting was this: don't treat your children as extensions of yourself. Parents are prone to do so. Dissatisfied with our own lives, we push them to accomplish things we never did. We call it wanting the best for them. It's hard to let them simply be who they are, want what they want, and face the same discontentment that's part of the human condition. But we must.

That wisdom gave me courage to let go, to treat the companionship of my children as a blessing rather than a right, to allow them their mistakes and hurts, to hesitate before giving advice, and trust them to find their own wisdom that's better than mine, or at least works better for them, or is at least sufficient.

It's hard not to boast in them, and indeed I should take pride in their journeys of self-becoming. Despite the principle of the wisdom, we are extensions of one another after all. Humans naturally organize into families and communities, without which we would be lost. We should make the best of our nature. The boundaries between me and you are fuzzy and untidy. When I try to verbalize my identity, it usually starts something like this: "I am a poet, I am a gay father of two daughters, I am a lover...." They are part of who I am, and nothing can shake that.

So the heart longs for connection but must be prepared for our children's constant departure into something new. My daughters are like me, and they are different, and I am not ashamed of either part. It's the same cycle that must have played out since our ancestors watched their fry learning to sink, swim or be eaten, and could only participate by feeling the gut hollowness of joy, grief, hope and terror.

PhD

Brenna frequently reminds me of one of the Mystics from The Dark Crystal. It's partly her posture, partly her fascination with small objects on the ground, and partly her capacity to sit for long periods without doing anything of consequence, which was, of course, the Mystics' greatest gift.

It is a perfect summer day: warm with a refreshing breeze. Brenna spends a while sitting in the branches of Old Man Willow, feeling his limbs rock gently, while I poke around photographing little and big things. Cicadas drone and red-eyed vireos warble relentlessly, a kingfisher darts silently upstream, and a bemused catbird utters a sudden interrogative overhead.

Brenna: "I like trees today."

Me: "It's a good day to be a tree."

Brenna: "They have big hair. When I grow up I want to be a tree. Or a hobo bent on world conquest."

Me: "You'll need a degree in photosynthesis."

Brenna: "Maybe that's what PhD stands for."