This will be one of those tough lessons for me as a father. Kids have to dream their own dreams. They have to make their own choices, live their own consequences, discover their own loves, stumble from their own failures.
This occured to me this week as I sorted through the latest batch of pictures of the kids taken by Melodia while they are in Florida. On the phone, she told me about the recent birthday party they went to at the beach.
Wil, at almost 4, is experiencing what may be his first crush, a sweet little Puerto Rican girl named Hailey. Hailey is the daughter of some friends of ours that attend the church Melodia’s dad pastors. Every time she’s around, Wil seems oddly distracted, and always ends up near her. Hmm.
And you know, I can’t help but love that stuff. I mean, really. What parent doesn’t? It reminds us all of those “interests” and stirs up feelings and remembrances of days past. I had a crush growing up. When I was older, and could actually reflect on it and tell the story of her, I often told friends that I secretly loved her from the day I saw her in Kindergarten until the day she moved away, just before our freshman year of high school. I remember well those crush feelings.
Watching Wil near Haley, Melodia and I both have thought how cool it would be for them to grow up sweethearts. We’re dreamers, aren’t we? All of us? In my life, I think I’ve only known a half dozen or so couples who were high school sweethearts, and only two who were sweethearts from before high school. So what chance does our “arranged couplage” stand?
But who wants realism to creep in at times like these? Darn it, the two of them are just plain cute, and look good together – even if we older adults imagine them with words they don’t even understand yet, like “couple” or “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.”
Yes, we’d happily plan our kids lives out for them now. But we can’t. It’ll be theirs to choose.
Why then is it so easy to look at kids and pair them up? Or to get excited when we see their crushes manifest?
So Haley has an older brother. JJ. Well guess who Melodia noticed McKinley (age almost 3) crushing on at the birthday beach party? Yep, JJ. Perfect, brother and sister fall for brother and sister, childhood sweethearts…. fast forward twenty years.
Brakes… we shouldn’t be wanting any fast-forwarding these days. Slow and easy. Soak it all up, every moment.
I think we look at kids and we see in them, at times like this, when they are crushing, this pureness of spirit that we want for the world. Two kids just enjoying the company of the other, somehow fascinated by the very movements of the other person, enchanted perhaps… but not complicated or convoluted by the dark realities of dating, growing up boy or girl in an all-too-materialistic and well, let’s be honest, evil-desiring, if not evil-doing society.
We see these kids crushing, and we admire it. It seems somehow pure, maybe closer to perfect now. And we imagine it always that way.
And too, we imagine how wonderful it would have been to grow up and know, to know that this is the person I am going to be with forever. To have that security. Of course, that isn’t how it would be. I don’t think that security is even close to being present until one slips on a ring, shoulders the true burden of the love commitment, forsaking all others, and patterning his/her mind to spend a lifetime with his/her spouse. (of course, some never quite grasp the ‘for better or worse’ and perhaps some shouldn’t have uttered those words in the first place).
So as I look upon my two kids and their recent crushes, some of what I am seeing is really a reflection of my life, of my wants. Yes, isn’t it so? I was 30 and single, and wondering why I had not found “her” in college like so many of my friends. I was 30 and single, and thinking, if I don’t find her in two years, I’d better adopt as a single dad, because maybe she wasn’t going to show. I was 30 and single, and thinking, “God, what’s up?”
But at 30, I finally found her. She was 30, too. And in our talks over the last 5 and half years, we’ve often wondered aloud how nice it would have been to have met each other sooner – to have started the journey earlier. I think this is somewhat reflected in our own desires for our kids.
But you know, I’m a dreamer… and a good daydreamer… and in my daydreams, I have indeed pondered what it might have been like if Melodia and I had met at Wil and Haley’s or McKinley and JJ’s age. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with your crush who becomes your friend and your love and with whom you mature through the years.
Of course, my daydream is tainted with perfection. It discounts the trials of puberty, the challenges of adolescence, and the millions of failures and hurts we’d likely have caused each other between 3-18. And the question of whether or not one could really survive the metamorphic nature of life between 3 and 18 with a human being other than our parents. That would take some kind of patience and some kind of perseverance… but I can’t help but daydream that it would also be some kind of wonderful.
Such was not my lot in life, though. And I doubt it will be my children’s. Nonetheless, I’ll daydream that little dream for them as I watch them around their first crushes. In the end, we’re not just routing for our kids or the kids of our friends (their crushes), we’re really all routing for love, aren’t we?
Routing that love wins out. That it is indeed stronger. Stronger than what? Than whatever it is that would compete against it. Just stronger. We all want to love and to be loved.
A friend and I were talking one day. This was in my college days at Point Loma in San Diego, California. She said to me, “Lonni, you’re in love with being in love.” I’ve always remembered those words. I’ve pondered them often. (raises hand), yep, I am. And I think many of us are. We’re longing for love, and we’re hoping that it’s as strong as we believe it is.
We hope that for the sake of ourselves… and when the day comes, we hope that for sake of our children. May they find the love we have found, and if we have not found it, may they find the love which has eluded us, whatever the reason.
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