The Grand View
Every parent and grandparent knows the feeling. We love without limits, care to infinity, and live with patience. We teach, and we learn.
And they grow. The stages are predicted, then they arrive, and then they are behind us. And the love is always there, but if we are sane about it, it is overshadowed by our desire for their independence. Not because we want to rid ourselves of them, because most of us would gladly freeze the moments of their youth for eternity. But then, would we really? It was not all pleasant. And that, too, is part of life.
They grow. It is bittersweet. Yet it is the only outcome we would ever want. Independence. To be. To do. To have. To learn. To make mistakes. And to win, just as we did.
And as they move over the horizon, a feeling of loneliness can occur, as though we were the ones left behind.
Yet a grander view says otherwise. For it is we who blazed the trail. And it is we who left our own parents and grandparents behind, waving at the door of their quiet homes as we ventured away, short distances at first, then further and further still, cutting ties in ways we did not fully understand, forging new lives and leaving behind feelings we ourselves did not yet understand.
It is a cycle. And any myopic view of a single part of that cycle can feel challenging, joyful, sad, amazing. But take the blinders off and see the larger picture, and we begin to see the never-ending repeat.
The older among us, having read most of the book, see not only the early chapters of their lives but know a great deal about the chapters to follow. And to us, they are the intervening chapters that led to where we are now, living our own chapter.
There lies a kind of wisdom. And if fully grasped, it can carry us forward with real happiness and satisfaction.
That is where I am.
Not one regret for what I left behind in the trail of my life. The new lives launched and lived, now independent of me, are only bittersweet if looking at single moments along the way.
But the grand view is, indeed, grand.
And I, in these later chapters, am writing the rest of my own book.
When Ely, my granddaughter, was 9, I was teasing her about what was to come.