A few columns back, I wrote about a mother cat and her kittens coming to join our family.
Those kittens are pretty close to being fully grown now, but just the other day mom tried to grab one by the scruff of its neck and drag it out of the room. She didn’t succeed. Her offspring shook her off like a bad smell and raced back to whatever he was doing that she was trying to get him away from.
Mom tried again and again failed. The third time was the charm and although she couldn’t carry her kitten in her mouth because he’s too big now, she did manage to get him to leave the room with her.
Watching the mom cat trying to corral her young reminded me that no matter how old our kids get, that urge to take them by the scruff of their neck and protect them from the big bad world is never far under the surface. They can be four or 40, and we still want to keep them from getting hurt.
Mother love is true, tough and lasts forever. A friend and I were talking about the days when our kids were little and everyone in their classes received at the very least “participation” certificates at any kind of game day. While there is a lot of debate over whether or not getting a certificate for showing up is a good thing or essentially meaningless, we agreed that we were happy when our kids got their little slips of paper stating they participated that day.
“I remember desperately wanting my son to get some kind of certificate at his game days,” my friend said. “Now, when we talk about it, he doesn’t even remember the certificate. He just recalls having fun with his friends.” There’s a lesson there, folks, and I believe we can tie it to wanting to protect our children from all the hurts and slights of life. You can’t. You can try but take it from every mom in the world: You’re going to fail.
What makes things even more interesting is that your offspring most likely won’t remember all the times you tried to stop the rain from falling on top of their heads. No, they’ll remember the time you stopped at Burger King instead of Taco Bell because, as they’ve always suspected, you loved their sibling (who wanted Burger King) more than you loved them. I’ve occasionally wondered why each generation never seems to learn much from the one before them. You’d think we’d watch our parents make mistakes and think “I’ll never do that!” or hear our grandparents’ stories about their mistakes and possibly pick up a crumb or two of wisdom from their trials. But that doesn’t seem to happen.
Apparently, each generation has to get knocked around a bit to grow up. And every mother — and father — is forced to sit back and watch while it happens to their offspring. It took me a very long time to understand that as a parent it isn’t my job to make sure the path in front of my children is as smooth as butter, so they never take a tumble. My job is to be there, at four or 40, to help support them when an inevitable rock or crack in the sidewalk trips them up. That is probably my least favorite thing about being a parent and the hardest part to accept.
Like the mother cat, I still want to take my sons by the scruffs of their necks and move them out of harm’s way whenever possible. And also like the mother cat, I’ve had to reluctantly accept the fact that there are times when no matter how much I’d like to, I can’t stop the rain from falling on anyone in our family at some point or another. Finally, one last thing the mom cat and I have in common — the ability to leave the room, curl up in a patch of sunlight and dream about a nice bowl of warm milk/carryout pizza. Moms might not be able to cure the world, but we can excel at ordering up comfort food for all.