Today is my father's birthday, and tomorrow is my daughter's: It's a great week for eating cake! We celebrated my dad with a rare dinner for just my parents, my sister, and me. Usually it's the whole orchestra, which includes two husbands and five more kids. There was a lot of talk of how special it felt to spend time with just our original quartet.
As is often the case on birthdays, there was also talk of years past. We ate in lower Manhattan, which conjured a conversation about the upcoming 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001. I was then fresh out of college, and working at the New York Times . I tore myself away from watching the smoke outside my apartment window and rode the subway uptown to Times Square. (The subway! Right in the middle of the madness of that morning!) My parents were living in Ann Arbor then. Looking back, I can't imagine how they felt that day, and in the succeeding weeks. I wasn't in danger, but we didn't know that at the time. And I was naïve, and unprepared for the flood of emotions that followed that morning. Watching from afar must have been miserable for my parents. At dinner, I acknowledged that to them, ashamed it had taken me twenty years to see it from their perspective.
Later, it occurred to me that I share stories with you about being a parent but not about being a daughter, or about my parents. Partly, it's respect for their privacy. But also, I remember my childhood as idyllic. I was raised with more love and care than most people can even dream of, and my parents made it look easy. So it's hard for me to imagine that parenting was hard for them, as it is for everyone, at times. And not just in the past tense! Tending to two adult daughters is still a lot to deal with.
If you still have a parent in your life, how has your experience of parenthood changed that relationship? If you've lost a parent, how does that impact your parenting? I'd love to hear from you. You'll find me at andrea@time.com.
Best, Andrea
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