On Love and Parenting

We often think of love in the context of instants: spotting a future partner, walking down the aisle, the smacking reality of a brand new baby handed to us for safekeeping. It’s human nature to anticipate these pivotal moments and to inflate them in our minds, allowing them to serve as our definition of a deep and abiding connection to another.

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We forget, I think, what a gradual process it is to understand love. All those references to the long-smoldering embers over the sudden spark reiterate this premise, but it does truly require time and life experience to transition from the impetuous tendencies and extreme emotion of youth to the depths of love and appreciation. There is a parenting poem that portrays what it is for a child to interpret the actions of parents and the feelings they evoke.

My aunt gave me this poem in a bound anthology when I first became a mother, and it resonated deeply for me. Call it the hormones, but I was teary-eyed when I flipped open the book and it landed on that particular piece. I was affected by all my parents had done, and all that would be required of me.

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When You Thought I Wasn’t Looking

by Mary Rita Schilke Korzan

When you thought I wasn’t looking

You hung my first painting on the refrigerator
And I wanted to paint another.

When you thought I wasn’t looking
You fed a stray cat
And I thought it was good to be kind to animals.

When you thought I wasn’t looking
You baked a birthday cake just for me
And I knew that little things were special things.

When you thought I wasn’t looking
You said a prayer
And I believed there was a God that I could always talk to.

When you thought I wasn’t looking
You kissed me good-night
And I felt loved.

When you thought I wasn’t looking
I saw tears come from your eyes
And I learned that sometimes things hurt—
But that it’s alright to cry.

When you thought I wasn’t looking
You smiled
And it made me want to look that pretty too.

When you thought I wasn’t looking
You cared
And I wanted to be everything I could be.

When you thought I wasn’t looking—
I looked . . .
And wanted to say thanks
For all those things you did
When you thought I wasn’t looking.

That piece has been pivotal to me as a parent – it evokes how essential and how monumental all the little moments and gestures are to children. I get it wrong more frequently than I get it right, but I keep trying. That piece clarifies the gradual process of earning and offering love – a collection of fleeting moments we wish we could grab with both hands because it feels good to be treated well. Likewise, we know we’ve gotten it right in friendship and in love when someone offers us simple kindnesses.

Not long after we met, my future husband and I were going to dinner – in our college years – when I learned that my childhood dog had died. I thought I was fine, an adult, able to handle such things and carry on – and I walked to the car and promptly burst into tears.

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Years later, early in our marriage, we were driving along a state highway when my normally reserved husband burst into incessant babble. As he pointed out the window and carried on, I wondered what had possessed him – and then I spotted a similar dog in the road. Here was someone who cared about me enough to act like a fool, someone clearly worthy of a lifetime together. I understood that love meant sparing others, and more importantly, I was vividly aware that I had married up.

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If we are fortunate to have people in our lives who prepare us – amazing parents, mentors and friends – we go out into the world comprehending that it will take hard work, good manners, humility more often than not and a sense that we will do the right thing for those we love because they are worth it.

Today, that same man does countless small things for me – offering me a warm towel from the dryer after a shower, refilling my wine glass (which I consider the ultimate kindness), hustling around on a Friday to prepare the perfect family movie night after a long week, making a final sweep of the house to check the locks before bed.

Movie night.

It seems to me that understanding love – and those who have loved us – throws into place a game plan and a resolve to very steadily work to return that immense favor every day of our lives… and to start over again on the days we’re less than kind to the ones we love the most.

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It turns out that all the tiny things – when we think nobody is looking – are, of course, the really big things.