grownup children, aging parent

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Children have never ceased to amaze me. When mine were small, they would come to me, tired and sweaty from playing, shoving a grimy fistful of dandelion flowers at me. My son, at two, was confident of the worth of his gift to me, given with a kiss and a quick turn-around to go back to whatever occupied his attention before. When my daughter did the same dandelion bouquet offering it was altogether different. She came up to me with her five yellow blossoms and doled them out to me, one at a time, accompanied by "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!" There! Five flowers for one proud mommy! At fourteen months! Their personalities were complementary, yet unique in their own quirks. And don't think that being two sides of one coin did not produce fights. But the fights are another story. Now the boy is a man, busy with work and an active social life, but still willing to be dragged along to shop with Mom. I take the time to pry into his love life--I am not exactly rebuffed, but it is the same feeling I got when he turned around to do his thing after giving me my dandelion heads (still around by the way, pressed brown between the pages of my old journal). The girl is now a career woman, a graphic designer who yearns to return to school and become a computer animator. It is funny how one looks back and in hindsight, she could not have been anything else. She would draw for hours on end, deliberately, slowly, painstakingly. In grade one she made up comic books to sell for a nickel each, and everytime she wrote me a note to tell me about anything, she would have a little illustration with it. One of them was a complaint about her brother. It was on a sheet from one of those notepads you got in the mail stuck to some magnet with a Realtor's face on it. She drew her brother as a fat circle face with crosses for eyes, tongue lolling out, hair standing on end, with the caption, "My brudder is an idjit!" I got a stomach ache from laughing but she was NOT amused. My memories of my children's growing years are precious to me--even the tantrums and the one-word answers you get when the "moon is full." These memories helped me survive my health challenges; remembering their antics helped me pull through, including a stroke in the past year. Sometimes, we are so caught up in the moment's emotion--it may be anger, disappointment, resentment--that we forget these gifts of creation, for whom we were blessed to be a channel, soon grow into their own worlds, which may or may not include us. May all the children of the world be blessed and feel loved.