I want to confess that I am not a religious person. I am not religious, and I would not really say that I am even spiritual. I believe in a general moral compass and doing our best everyday. I know that is dangerous, in a way, because we are human and our view of what is right or wrong is limited to our subjective experiences. But, I also have trouble reconciling that scripts handed down from ancient times could do better to dictate what is right or wrong, than what we are able to collectively perceive and understand right now as humans. So, there it goes, my imperfect faith in humanity.
Anyway, that is a roundabout way to explain that often, when I am in a place of struggle, I have to look inward for optimism or inspiration. I don't look outwards because I think that someone else might come and save/comfort me from my troubles, but I look inward and try to shift my perspective, so that I can find something to appreciate about every moment, even the challenging ones. I don't know what it says about me that I was able to do this even when my (beloved) late mother was very ill. I remember visiting her while she was undergoing one of her last rounds of chemo treatment, and she looked so frail and ill and deeply unhappy. I remember talking to her when she had the energy to talk, and then silently telling myself that those days were hard -- so hard, in fact, to see someone who was always such a source of optimism and strength in my own life to be so devoid of life -- but that some day, I was going to look back on even those days as still the "good days", when I still had her around. I felt so much gratitude that not only did she make it until the birth of my son, but that they always had a mutually joyful relationship in their brief interactions. (He's much more challenging these days, and he also cannot remember her, besides recognizing her from pictures. A part of me laments that she can't be here to see him having grown so much and accomplished so much, but another part of me thinks it's probably better that she only had sweet baby interactions with him.) During the pandemic, looking inward for optimism has been extremely helpful. 2020 was very hard as a whole, but I found myself constantly shifting to a mode of deep gratitude for health, family, nature, and love. Today, I wanted to sit down and write a love letter to my husband, particularly through the lens of my son's recent therapy. (He started feeding therapy a couple of months ago, and is due to start OT in May, when we get back from our road trip, to address some vestibular and sensory issues.) My husband won't actually read this, because he's not much of a blog-reader or a social media person. But, I wanted to write it for myself, as I have wanted to for some time. We have been together since September 2006, and married since March 2013. During that time, things have not always been peachy sweet, but I have always appreciated our deep love, friendship, support, and partnership. Over time, I have come to learn that my husband is very different from me. I love and appreciate him for our differences, even though sometimes I do feel frustrated for our differences as well. I try to focus on how our differences strengthen both our marriage and parenthood -- as my friend recently said to me, "I have always thought that you and G complement each other very well, both as humans and as parents." My husband is a self-taught, engineering, persevering kind of person. From things small to large, he likes to always try to do it by himself. When the toilet breaks, instead of calling a plumber, he would happily spend two days on the bathroom floor, taking apart all parts of the toilet, fixing the leak and learning about how the toilet works (and then refer fondly to the incident for years afterwards). When our wooden shutters broke in Berlin, he parked himself in the living room for over an hour, trying to fix it, instead of heading outside with me as promised. This guy converted our grill to a natural gas grill, even though technically you are only supposed to do it if you are a certified plumber. He has written an entire distributed database from scratch and is in the process of creating a new programming language. No biggie, but this guy likes to do everything by himself. He once started a company from scratch and then sold it, and he has started multiple business ideas since. I adore and respect that can-do spirit about him. --BUT, the flip side is that my husband never likes to ask for help. He does not like to follow recipes or Lego instructions; he does not like to watch YouTube tutorial videos; he does not like to read parenting books; and he does not like to seek therapy (for us or our kids). He feels like other people's insights are mostly too general / not that useful. The most sensible way to learn, he thinks, is by trying things out yourself and then adjusting the course based on your own intuition. I feel like that is where I come in. In school, I was proficient at playing the "school game." As a student, I did not like ambiguity (something that I still struggle with as an adult sometimes). If I started a task, I wanted feedback right away to know if I was on track or not. I liked drafts of assignments, and then improving based on feedback. How that translates to me being a parent is that I devour parenting books, digest their philosophies, try them on my kids, read tons of articles, talk to other parents in my community, and am enthusiastic about seeking additional professional help if I am still in doubt. I am the over-researching antidote to G's under-researching self. By ourselves, I think each of us would have floundered perhaps as parents. Trusting others' professional opinions on everything and trusting others on nothing seems each to be too extreme, by itself. Together, however, I think we do strike the right balance. With both of our kids, I would suggest here and there that they might be a little off-the-norm in certain areas. Like, our 4-month-old is taking an hour to drink just 4 ounces of milk? Our 6-month-old still can't really roll over or push her chest up with both hands? Our 4.5-year-old still is scared to walk down the stairs and to lather on sunscreen? My husband would do his part to resist, resist, re-s-i-s-t.... until he breaks down and says, "Okay, fine, you seem very concerned, so let's just look into it." I know that therapy is not his thing, and he would rather see our kids experimenting, persevering, and finding their own way through to the other side of any challenge, but the important thing is, he acquiesces and compromises. And then once the therapy starts, although I still take the lead in filling out the forms, scheduling the visits, and running the show, my husband shows up with his warmest, most enthusiastic self. As far as the kids could tell, we are on the same front, rooting for their therapy success. And for that, I love and appreciate my husband more everyday. We don't need to be the same person, or to see eye to eye on everything in parenthood. Maybe he is right, and maybe I am just a paranoid mom. Or, maybe I am right, and our kids need extra help. But, I love that in spite of his preconceived notions and inclinations, he supports my decisions, big and small, in our marriage. And that has always been the most defining character of our relationship. I often feel like parenting is challenging, because it's the ultimate projects-based learning experience. You go into it with almost zero expertise, and you hope that after 18 years (or in our case, 18+3 years, because our kids are 3 years apart), you would still want to hang out with this partner. So far, so good. <3
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Growing up, I was always extremely close with my mom. I have so many memories of talking to her for an hour at a time, while she was cooking in the kitchen every night. I would tell her every small thing that had happened at school, and she would help me to reflect on who I am and what my observations and opinions said about my values. Even though I moved away from home after high school and proceeded to live in different states, countries, and even continents than her, I always maintained a very close relationship with my mom. After she was diagnosed with cancer in 2013, I made it a priority to visit her regularly, in order to spend as much time with her as possible; I did not want to feel any regret after her passing. I wanted to make sure that she felt loved and appreciated by me, and selfishly, I also wanted to make more memories with her before it was too late.
When my mother passed away in 2018, it was the end to five years of surgery and treatment. She had missed physically being present for the birth of my son and her first grandchild (in 2016), because she had been undergoing chemotherapy at home. By the time she passed, she had been confined to her couch and bed for a while; she had grown incredibly thin and could not stay awake for long stretches of time, and it was terrifying to wait for the last goodbye that could come at any time. In that slow, excruciating journey of loss, we had said goodbye both explicitly and emotionally so many times, that I felt there was simultaneously nothing left unsaid, and yet everything still to be said, once she was actually gone. When I read Michelle Obama's Becoming, one of the parts that hit me in the gut with raw emotions was her description of the loss of her father. The slowness of that loss, the incredible resilience of her father, and the way that loss forced her to reflect upon her own mortality and legacy, were very real experiences that I had myself in experiencing the loss of my mother. When my mother passed, besides feeling a deep sadness and trying to smooth over a gaping hole in my family, what I felt was an immediate question about my own life choices. When it came to the end of my life, would I feel satisfied with how I had lived my life? The loss of a parent forces this question upon you. In uncertain times like the one we are living in now, I both draw strength from the strength that I witnessed in my mother, and question sometimes my own decision to have children. I have a feeling that I might not be alone in questioning this. Well, I share my thoughts on that reflection here, to perhaps assuage your guilt in being a parent. 1. Human kind has always faced great adversity in different periods -- famine, war, poverty. If our ancestors had decided that they would only have children when everything seemed smooth-sailing, I can be fairly confident that most of us would not be here today. To have and rear children is both an act of radical hope and a commitment to pass on our humanity. I think there was a dystopian novel The Children of Men, where the premise is that no more children were being born on earth? I never read that book, actually, but I think it is true that children serve a very important purpose in our society. They are both a symbol of radical hope and they bring more hope and joy -- not only to their parents and family members, but to the greater community, whoever gets to witness that hope and joy. Until the last generation of humans on earth, I believe that each generation will continue to make and raise babies, against all odds. As they should -- else, what are we fighting for? 2. Humans are resourceful. My extremely optimistic husband believes that humans have the tools necessary to solve the great challenges we are facing currently. No, it is not all solvable by one person. The climate change problems we are facing are huge and complex. They require hundreds and thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people working collaboratively to solve. They require a tide of public pressure for the government to change its agenda and priorities at all levels. And even then, it will likely take generations of work, in order to reverse the harm that has been done. If today, all of the left-leaning, science-believing friends decided that they will not raise children, we have already lost that fight. It is our job to raise human beings who are willing and able to move that dial and to continue that fight into the next generation. 3. Maybe this is just me being sentimental, but I think the three main components of my own humanity are: my relationship to my parents/sibling; my relationship to my greater community; and my relationship to my own created family (eg. my marriage and my relationship with my children). Through those three elements, my life gains meaning and is worth living, which comes back full circle to losing my mother and the reflections that I have had since. In being part of this long line of human existence, we are like a butterfly that goes through its own life cycle. It seems silly to question why a butterfly should procreate, simply because we don't know what life will look like for the next generation of butterflies? It was my hope that this post could bring you at least some comfort in these uncertain times. I am not sure if it accomplished that or was actually a downer, but I wanted to say simply that I see you, all the struggling parents out there. It is not easy balancing work, marriage, our own mental health, our idea of justice, climate worries, a pandemic, and trying to raise healthy and happy kids. I see you doing your best and holding on to radical hope. You are not alone. |
About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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