Before and After: The Parent's Reward

One of the most pitiful misapprehensions a parent can evince is dismay at their child's ingratitude.  I'm still a newcomer to this game but I hope fervently that I shall not become one of those dads bemoaning his teen taking everything for granted.  If you want gratitude get a dog.  

Instead the joy of children is in their unexcelled solipsism.  This realisation hit me forcefully with the arrival of our baby.  His beginning was an end for me.  And not the end of freedom, of impulsive weekends in Paris (like they ever happened), of disreputable nights bleeding sybaritically into days at Gerry's on Dean Street (yeah, not many of those either actually).  But an actual end.  Because to your child your life before their birth did not exist.  They may take an interest, they may not, they may trade exaggerated tales of glamour, tragedy or drama when they start dating but it's all second hand: your life become prologue.

Even more gallingly when life as you know it hits the buffers upon their arrival, when literally every moment is spent in anguish about the adequacy of your parenting they are blissfully, insouciantly, unaware of the comet thudding impact they have had.  Furthermore, adding insult to injury, when they become walking, talking reasoning beings they can't even remember any of it.

Summon up the earliest memory of your parents.  Now realise that preceding it were months, weeks, days, hours and minutes of self-sacrifice, of anxiety about your wellbeing, were you warm enough, fed enough, rested enough, stimulated enough and, of course, changed enough.  I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank my ma and pa.  True it is there was quite a lot of delegation of the more liquid aspects of early parenting but even allowing for that I don't think I've done much by way of articulating, still less demonstrating, my gratitude for all that they did and, perhaps more importantly, forewent when I turned up.

And as night follows day so do thoughts of before turn to thoughts of after.  If nature is, God willing, uninterrupted your children will be your genetic legacy.  When you are dust and ashes your children will be your living history.  A more vital and visceral reminder of your mark on the world than any novel, painting, song or tweet ever could be.

It is in our parenting that we achieve the fullest revelation of our relationship with our parents as this illuminating article on attachment theory demonstrates and at the same time it is in our children that we see the future we shall never know, that is the paradox of parenthood and all the reward we should ever reasonably expect.