Deep Impact

Thursday, May 3, 2007
8:20:35 PM CDT
Feeling Quiet
Hearing Save a Prayer



Deep Impact


I've been thinking a lot about my parents lately, and their lives. The choices they made and the people they are today.

It has taken me a lot of time and a lot of prayers to allow myself to give them the unconditional love that I believe all parents deserve. I don't know if I believe that because religion taught to believe that, or if because I know it's the right thing to do. How exactly do you "win" someone's love, and a better question is, once you get it, what do you do with it?

As an adult looking back at my life as a child, I have to conceed that my parents did the best for me that they could. For who they were and for what they had, it was all they had and/or were willing to offer me. I think my parents fell into the trap that many parents do; I don't think they took into consideration the huge and highly critical job they subscribed to when they had children. Being the oldest, I seem to have biased view on this aspect, because the first time you can always say was an "oopsie", although I don't really think any pregnancy is an "oopsie", but any subsequent offspring and you know it's just a matter of reckless irresponsiblity. Most people who have children usually have an idea of what sex is and how a baby is conceived, and since at leaast when I was a child, sexual education was taught in the schools, which means most of them got an idea of what birth control was.

I always got the feeling that I was an inconvienience to my parents until I got to be old enough to be a live in babysitter. I once asked my dad why, I mean, based on the "oopsie" idea, why two other times, what were you thinking? The answer I got from him I found unacceptable.

"Back then", I was told, "It was suggested and idealized that if you were unhappy in a marriage, the answer was to have more children".

At this point, I'm kind of feeling like the caveman on the Geico commercial..... "Uh....what?"

Now historically people have chosen to have offspring for many different reasons. Back in the day, people had as many children as possible because that meant more help on the farm and more hands to tend to the family's needs. During wartime, people had children to replace lives lost, and that's another, "Uh....what?", but I can see the point in both of those attitudes. But why use a child as a weapon?

The one thing the relationship my parents had taught me was this; If it didn't work before, it's not going to work then, and no amount of extra offspring is going to heal the wound, the only thing you are accomplishing is putting more passengers on your roller coaster to hell.