Growing Up

As a child, they were the most powerful beings in the world. They were omnipotent and omniscient. There was nothing they could not do, nothing they could not achieve.

Their word was law. Should they form a negative opinion of a thing, it disappeared from the face of the earth. If something found their favour, it was transcended to the echelon reserved for the divine.

I lived in awe of them and believed they would forever guide my life.

*

Now I am a man with the foolishness of childhood long gone. Life has pierced me, battered me, taken my innocence. I have been affronted by a score of sins committed against me, and poisoned by the hundreds more I have committed.

The guardians of my youth protect me no more. In truth, I now see that they never had the ability to shield me from this dreaded world. Their power was imaginary, their influence paltry.

I regard them now with disdain, scornful of the time I spent with them in aimless play, time that could have been spent preparing for these incessant battles which make up what we call life.

*

Yesterday, my parents passed.

I look to my children and see how, in trying to be different from my parents, I have disappointed and scarred them. Have I been too harsh? Did I quell their imagination in my desire to make them ready for the world?

I do not have the answer, I cannot see the future. Perhaps my children will teach my grandchildren in manner neither I nor my parents could find. Perhaps there is no right way to raise a child, only myriad wrong ways. Is parenthood nothing but a guideless route from birth to adulthood which all are destined to fail in some way?

With this new insight comes a new appreciation of the strength, the power, the tenacity my parents displayed when raising me. Though they knew not the answers, their positive approach and keenness to chase those answers has reignited the unquestioning love I once held for them.