From Dependent to Independent

When I get a call to help a customer with their groceries, it always puts a big smile on my face when I discover I am helping a mother and newborn baby as I did today. I don’t believe I made any brownie points with Luke (the baby) when I was loading groceries in the trunk of his mother’s minivan.  His irritated cries informed me the cold air blowing in on the backseat, where he was strapped in did not meet his high standards of comfort.

I looked at this mother and thought, “You recently entered the hall of parenthood. Bobbi, my wife, and I are somewhere in the middle of that long hallway. We both are frantically opening doors, and hoping to get some help soon.”

Allena was born two weeks early via caesarian section at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, OH, due to the fact that toxemia (blood poisoning) had developed in Bobbi. The draped curtain over Bobbi’s midsection kept both of us from seeing the surgery that was happening.

I remember holding my wife’s hand. A look of fear was in her eyes. The doctor tugged Allena from Bobbi’s rib cage. She just didn’t want to come out. At 8pm I yelped as the baby that came out of my wife was a girl (and not the boy my mother predicted). My daughter with her hands in praying position was whisked away to be weighed and cleaned before Bobbi saw her after she was sewed up.

Fast forward to 2014, the eighteen year-old Allena goes to college, drives, works at a restaurant, dates, and has strong opinions about a variety of subjects in life. Though she will always need our assistance emotionally (and physically) on some level, she could survive on her own if for some reason we were removed from her life.

I’ve been told that once you are a parent always a parent. No reprieve. Would you want that? If you are lucky enough to get grandchildren, I’ve heard they are like a second chance to do better this time around with your parenting skills.  St Francis of Assisi stated, “Start by doing the necessary, then the possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”