Reflections

"Every life has a story".

My story happens to be deeply intertwined with three other living, breathing human beings. My life is so knitted with theirs that my children's success' and failures are felt just as intimately as if they were my own. I think every parent feels like this in one way or another. And it's every parents struggle not to take the reigns and lead their children through the winding challenges of life. It would be so easy to make their choices for them. It would be so simple to give them the life we are so eager for them to have. But rebellion is neatly sewn within each of us. And eventually our advice, our wisdom, our own life experiences fall on deaf ears. We become their inner groan, the embarassment they wish to hide from their friends. It's inevitable. For a while, a short while, we are their heroes, we know everything...but eventually they realize we come from a world different than their own.

Our world was one of pens, and pencils, paper and books. A world where the internet is younger than ourselves, and where the memory of cassette tapes and the new fangled world of CD's still ring true. And now suddenly grade schoolers carry around cell phones, computer labs exist in every classroom, and E readers have taken the place of paperbacks. Our advice and wisdom now seems arcaic even in our own eyes.

I suppose my own parent's felt this way. I remember viewing them as enigmas..."how could candy be bought for a penny", "did they really walk up hill both ways to school and home", and "was imagination truly favoured over TV?". But even with so much difference between the eras one thing rings as true today as it did 50 years ago...

After having children...everything changes; and the person you thought you were no longer exists. And that seemingly lame excuse your parent spouted everytime no other explanation seemed satisfactory, bursts forth from your lips like a curse chanted over every generation since the dawn of time...

"You'll understand when you have kids"...

And I do...I finally do.