The Parent Epiphany

Lord knows that parenting, like getting old, is not a job for the faint of heart. When they are just born, and ever so-adorable, life seems full of promise, carefree and joyful. But within the first 72 hours, even before recovery from the exhaustion and exhilaration of childbirth, a tiny seed of worry sends out its first little shoot. Why? Because you are now fully aware of the enormous responsibility that you have for a life that you cannot, even then, fully protect. At the same time, you know in advance all of the dangers and worries that this little being does not know, and will not for a long, long, long time fully appreciate and avoid.

So begins the lengthy process of weaning the child from the parent and the much longer and difficult process of weaning the parent from the child. It starts with a "snuggly" firmly strapped to your chest, graduates to a "cozy coupe" pushed at first from behind then shifted into the higher gear of Fred Flintstone flapping feet, then the scarier balancing act of a "beginner's bicycle" before advancing to the two ton death machines we call cars. Of course, each one of these vehicular milestones maps one-to-one with equally frightening advances in food, drink, drugs, friends, music and other social and cultural choices.

All of those formerly dreaded childhood diseases have long since been removed from the equation by vaccines or, in most cases, highly effective medical treatments. This leaves the parent free to worry about other things, for nature abhors a vacuum. So the parent becomes obsessed with the latest fads in education, social adjustment and other such things, at least in the larger urban areas. My recollection of a halcyon time in a more rural community suggests that this particular disease of mind is not so prevalent in the Big Sky country, though I suspect that some insidious version of it has been carried there by Big Sky wannabees escaping from the clogged arteries of the left and right coasts.

So when does all the fussing end, for parent or for child? Maybe never; maybe when the care taking and care giving roles reverse; maybe for the lucky sometime in the transition to early adulthood. Few read, much less quote, Rudyard Kipling anymore. Too much Imperial Britain in the prose, too optimistic a sensibility for these times. Something one will undoubtedly find in William Bennett's The Book of Virtues and either reject or embrace it for that reason alone. Nevertheless, here it is:


IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

With the possible exceptions of Elijah, Jesus of Nazareth, Mohammed, Ghandi and the Buddha, who is qualified as a "man" to set this standard for his son? Apart from what the poem suggests about the self-delusional nature of the poet, or the perfectibility of man, a discerning parent may find in it a kernel of wisdom . Somewhere along the pot-holed road to manhood, a time may come, as it came for me last summer, when I knew my son was a man, and I could stop being the worrying parent.

It happened in a raft on the Toulomne River, just outside Yosemite, on the first of a series of Class V rapids. The hour before this event recaptured 20 years of parental anxiety as I went through the usual checklist of things to be taken, things to be left behind and things to be left alone. My son and I signed in and filed on to the 50 year old yellow school bus, which could have been used in the filming of a memorable scene from Romancing the Stone on location in some Central American banana republic. Only the chickens were missing.

The bus rattled away from the starting point and soon turned on to a narrow, rutted decommissioned logging road carved from the face of the gorge for the 2000 foot descent down to the site of the raft launch. The driver ground the stick into first gear, possibly because the brakes were not entirely adequate, and cheerfully boomed over the noise: "How many of you have done this before?" Two of eighteen raised hands. "So the rest of you have never been on a Class V logging road?" Nervous laughter; some hands white knuckled the armrests; those on the downhill side began to lean toward the uphill side; a few compulsive chatterboxes chattered; the rest stared ahead.

Thirty minutes later, the bus sputtered to a stop. Tension drained and the gallant eighteen marched off the bus, not to the sound of the rapids, but directly to the restrooms. It seemed that the most dangerous part of the adventure, at least until the pick-up at the end of the day, had passed. The three guides quickly called out names to form three groups, one for each of the rafts waiting for us. Equipment included a helmet, life vest and a paddle. Each guide then conducted a twenty minute session on what happens when -- not if -- one of the crew goes into the river. That held our collective attention for about five of the twenty minutes, but some started fidgeting and were eager to get into the rafts.

A practice session in relatively calm water then followed with the guide barking out commands. After a few trials, the crew began to get the drill though the six rookie paddlers were always a bit out of sync, especially on the turning maneuvers. Ours was the lead raft, and off we went, the white water crashing off the midstream boulders on both sides. We were through the most difficult part when my son yelled out from his position immediately behind, "Man overboard!" From the last seat in the raft came the piercing scream of the newly wed wife of the man overboard. Contrary to the on-shore drill, the groom started to swim away from the raft toward the shoals. My son shouted out, "Come back to the raft!" and, as though he had done this many times before, extended his paddle for the swimmer to grab hold. The guide, meanwhile, tried to steady the raft while calming the nearly hysterical bride. The swimmer came next to the raft. My 125 pound son (when soaking wet, and he was) reached over the edge, grabbed him by the vest, leaned back and flipped the much larger and heavier man into the raft with such leverage that he nearly went out again over the other side.

So, I thought to myself, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs" and a whole lot of other things "you'll be a Man, my son."


ADDENDUM

One week after this piece first posted, Joni Mitchell's new release "Shine" shows up in the kiosk at Starbucks. She titles the last track of the CD "If", with an attribution an acknowledgement to the Kipling Estate. "If" serves as the coda, on an uplifting note, to what otherwise could only be characterized as a Jeremiadic collection in an octave lower than what we remember from the 60's and 70's. She takes a few modest liberties with some lines and neuters the Kipling thrust at the end with:

If you can fill the journey
Of a minute
With sixty seconds of wonder and delight
Then
The Earth is yours
And everything that's in it
But more than that
I know
You'll be alright
You'll be alright.

Cause you've got the fight
You've got the insight
Tou've got the fight
You've got the insight.

Like the aging Sinatra, the phrasing still exhibits exquisite artistry, although the range and purity of the voice faintly echoes the past. She gets credit for nerve, but not verve, in making the comeback; it lacks energy and conviction, a kind of tired resignation, a musak of her former self.