A Day in the Life of Chaos

There is something that happens inside a parent as their child grows and they realize they don’t need them as much anymore.    In truth it should be seen as success.  “Spread your wings little one… fly!”, is the refrain I thought would echo in my brain.  My son is growing older.  He is nearly 21 now.  Sure he needs my money to survive but aside from that the dependent ties of a child are becoming thinner.   As a parent I must shift from the role of ruler to advisor.  The wise council that may or may not be followed and honestly may or may not be wise.  Every parent has a different way of confronting this issue and some never do.  My grandfather never stoped calling my mother “Baby Sally.”  I think in her parents minds she was always a little girl and never transitioned to adulthood.  My wife’s parents seemed to have accepted her growth yet every time she returned home she was still their girl and they took her under their parental wings as they had always done.  Despite bei ng of

As children grow older they progressively separate themselves from their parents.  This isn't a bad thing, it is part of their own preparation for life.  Still it can be a hard and at times torturous process as they reach for independence and still want security.  As parents, we do our best to provide security but know in our hearts we have to let them go. For most teenagers their ambitions and activities take them away from their parents.  I would look rather odd riding around in the back seat of my son's friends car.  I would most certainly at best wind up in traction and at worst kill myself if I ever tried to step on one of my son's skateboards or long boards.   Still I think we as parents try to think up activities to keep our children close to us.  Often they are things that we desire more than they do and the activity itself becomes a torture to the very child we want to hold close.  In a sense our very attempt to be with our child drives them further away. I

Something happens starting in your forties and moving on.  Up to this point we live our lives independently.  We spend years separating ourselves from our parents and learning how to function on our own.  Sure, parents are always there to help out with advice or to fix something but we are mostly focused on establishing our own lives and families. We have our own children now and they have so many needs.  We have jobs and mortgages to pay.  When something breaks we have to fix it, when its time to eat, we have to make it.  While all this is going on at some point in life our parents start to need us more.  It can happen very slowly and often we don't even perceive the change yet it happens. As I look around at my friends who share my age I can see it happening.  These days I see it quite brilliantly in the life of my father who is now in his 60's and has a mother in her 90's.   I see it in the life of my dear friend Peggy whose father in law spent his final days with them

When you are a parent there are fuzzy invisible lines in life.  You don't know where they are or when they are crossed but inevitably when raising a child there is a point when they are.  One day you look back and realize something changed. It happens in the smallest things yet the ones that make you smile and also make you sad.  When you are a father and have a son there is some point when they stop holding your hand.  When kisses disappear and when hugs are farther and farther apart.  When the unbridled admiration a child holds for their parent isn't quite so strong, when they would rather spend a weekend with their friends than with you.  We look at the pictures that line our walls detailing each stage of their growth and wish we could step back for a moment in time.  This is not to diminish the pride we feel as they progress and become adults yet there is something innocent that seems gone.  I think this is one reason why some parents have children later into life.  They

There is something warm and furry in my house. It has a pink nose and demonic red eyes that provide a counter balance to it's seemingly cute and cuddly nature. It runs in the night like a ghost passing through walls and it searches the dark recesses of it's lair for buried treasure. It has freakish hands that grip like mine as it opens pockets of treasure and reveals the morsel tuck within. As often happens to a parent despite my best effort at strength I is was undermined by a vast array of elements poised against me.   These include the begging eyes of a child and the sympathetic support of a grandfather.  It is enough to make the strongest mountain cave in upon itself.  Grandfather's are in the unique position to support any desires of their beloved grand child while being able to walk away to the tranquility of their own home.  Ahh... what a luxury.  At the same time be careful of what you reap my mind reminds, as the very same child is filling himself with diabolica

When I was a child I had a mentor.  Well not really, mentor is a word that conjurers up an image of an apprentice working with a powerful wizard.  In reality it was more like a person that feels special to you for an unknown reason.  There was just something about that person that seemed to sit right.  Maybe they listened, maybe they didn't.  Maybe it was just a person that even though I never asked anything from them, they made me feel secure.  They made me feel important or valued in some way.  In my case they were friends of my parents who in some way through my contact with them made me feel important in their eyes. Ken Piper Nearly as far back as I can remember I knew a wonderful man.  He seemed seven feet tall and had a body four feet wide.  His head was bald and he had a smile and a laugh as deep as a geyser billowing steam.  He used to give me books or records when I was small and as I grew older he would take me to school.  He lived with us for awhile while his life w