On Being a Parent

There is another lesson to be learned as I blog. I am not sure if it is the way my brain work or if it is due to old age. (Ad will insist it is the second option.) but ideas and thoughts are really really fleeting nowadays. At one instant, the thoughts are there and organized, the next, it is forgotten until it comes back at its own time and day. So this morning as the thoughts came, I quickly jot it down on a paper before it flew away again
Following my last statement in the last blog and on the occasion of my niece’s wedding over the weekend, one gets an overview of a parent’s role. Time flies as I still remember how shy she was as a baby and how she will cry each time anyone unfamiliar gets too near her. Today she is all grown up poised and pretty, confident and a wife to another. In the process I am sure her parents like me would have gone through a journey of parenthood. I am sure there were many times in her life that the parents would have love to steer the child’s life believing that it is the best course. But as parents we learn that we need to let go and the more we care the more we need to stand apart and let them venture out. It could be pretty nerve racking and sometimes stressful not forgetting painful but it has to take that that course. It is truly ‘if they don’t fall, they won’t learn’ we can only prepare them before hand and say our prayer that if they do fall, it is not too painful. Their choice of career path, their friends and their life partners are some of the things parents need to tie themselves to the tree to stop themselves from interfering. You may feel you have the right and the eyes to see things they don’t but the kids themselves certainly think otherwise.
Parents have only approximately 20 years to prepare the foundation and then you move aside to view and bit your fingernails. If you are lucky, you will still have nice manicures nail otherwise, good luck!
Nowadays as I listen to the younger generation talk about their opinions, or see the decisions they made about their life, you say a silent prayer. I was reading the life history of Tian Chua and the thought is how the parents have felt. I have seen a number of those in the twenties who threw away their profession and decide to do the alternative like spending time at church and I pray that I could accept it if my turn comes along.
Phew, the job of a parent! Maybe the happier alternative would have been to have half a dozen kids, throw them out into the streets and be ignorant of all things possible. Maybe life would have been simpler then! And we thought we have progress from our parents’ time! Look as if they might have been the smarter ones.