Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve

Most all of the parents I ‘ve known have tried their best. I have found that it is the single most inspiring-exhausting, filling-emptying, exhilarating- frightening vocation in life.

When expecting my one and only, I remember standing in the checkout line at the IGA when another mom suggested to me that parenthood would be the ‘hardest job I’ll ever love’- I think she may have coined that term from the Peace Corps or the US Army - perhaps a fitting metaphor. Come to find out she was right. It has lifted me to the heights of joyfulness and deflated me to something that could shrink and slither down a storm drain.

Parenthood has created moments of levitation-pride and joy beyond measure only to be expunged by countless hours of tears and worry. Had love been a commodity that one might measure - more than a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck- and eventually exhaust -I imagine most all of us have learned that once empty it’s automatically refilled, replenished and renewed with a hopefulness that extends beyond the supernatural into the realm of loaves and fishes and miracles. Parents often seem equipped to hold onto a handle of Mary Poppin’s endlessly giving carpet bag and try with whatever means they can muster to be there, mend, soften, deflect, absorb their child’s pain.

I imagine we may have all heard the metaphor for parenthood as removing your heart from your body and living with it vulnerably perched on your sleeve… forever. It becomes a broad stroke in life – allowing the concept of ‘self’ to attach itself to ‘other’ –existing in an often unpredictable and uncertain world.

Growing up, I felt that parenthood was a bit more straightforward—maybe a clearer and slightly detached rule book of clean clothes: check; food on the table: check; brown-bag lunches: check; bath time: check—and in that was a freedom allowing us to go out into the world without as much protection or so many strings attached. Or perhaps that was just a perception grounded in a safer world and too many kids to keep track of. Love and respect were expected and given without long conversation or analysis—before the age of helicopter parents, security check-ins at elementary schools, and the Ivy League hustle.

Some folks are parents-some are not- some long to be parents-some do not- some miss their parents-some just don’t. It is a complicated landscape that has populated the planet since the beginning of time. Wherever we sit on that terrain we do our best to adjust to the fate we’ve been handed – and live out our days acknowledging our singular identity – knowing contentment can only truly come from within.

There must be a similar attachment throughout time—this love beyond measure—which, for each of us, may feel different, look different, be different. And of course, there are nightmare stories and the need for some to separate for survival. For others my hope would be that children—of which we all once were, and perhaps always will be—remember the love from which they came-oh yes, I know it might have looked different and been different for each of us. Parents… though not practically perfect in every way… may often be lingering for a sighting, or a phone call, or even just a jelly donut from the bakery. And even though their express desire is for you to have the freedom and joy to experience your own journey in this world, their hearts may have never left their sleeves. ❤️