What Would You Do?

We wear a lot of hats in our lives. We do a ton of different things. We are  a ton of different things. I worked for the post office for 30 years, I worked in factories (badly...so badly), I worked in the library, I volunteered. Those were things I did. I liked many of them, was good at some of them, and am glad for those opportunities and responsibilities--I learned from all of them.

But there are things I am, too. I'm a mom, a nana, a wife, a writer, a Christian, and a few other things that go beyond just doing. I'm female, a heterosexual, white. If I have secrets in my family tree about ethnicity or predispositions, I don't know what they are. I don't care. 

But in my list of things that I am rather than what I do, being a mom is top of the list. It's the most important thing I've ever done. I made every imaginable mistake in the process. I'm still making them. There were incidents in my kids' growing up that made me lie awake for many hours on many nights. I prayed a lot, yelled a lot, was scared...oh, a lot. 

Because...you know...I didn't know what to do. 

If one of my kids' gender had been in doubt--too much testosterone in my daughter or uncertain "parts," in any of them, I wouldn't have known what to do. If drugs were a problem, or alcohol, or mental illness, I wouldn't have known what to do. Because loving them wouldn't have been enough. I'd have had to have been their advocate. More than that, I'd have had to have been the advocate of the people they were, not the people I expected.

But I think of the parents of the people who are hated. The artists whose renderings others shudder at, the athletes who are demonized for whatever reason, people who present as something other than who we believe they should be. 

I don't like abstract art. Being totally honest, I haven't completely "gotten" any since Norman Rockwell died. I'm virtually never able to see and feel what the artist saw and felt. But I can like the colors, the emotions that are sometimes palpable. I can say Wow, look at that instead of referring to it in ugly terms.

I've learned something in art galleries and while living, and probably while writing this. Those things that we humans are...they aren't up to us. I knew from the first breath of my first child that I was no longer the same person I'd been the day before. I knew the first time I typed a story that I wasn't the same person I'd been before Aunt Gladys let me use her typewriter. 

While I wanted to be good at all those things I did--and sometimes I was--life went on when I wasn't, it went on when I was criticized, when things weren't always fair. 

When it came to the things I am, it got a little stickier. I don't take well to criticism and disrespect for my faith, I am deeply wounded when my writing is denigrated and sneered at. When others dive into cruelty and untruth to or about my adult kids on Facebook, I am livid.

It doesn't matter that they are parents of adult kids themselves. It doesn't matter that they are themselves flawed or that instead of growing up into the people I expected, they grew up into themselves. 

There. Finally, I get to the question in the title. You are a parent, from the first breath on, and very little after that first breath goes as you expect it to. 

What would you do, then, if your child was something that a bunch of really loud people disliked and disrespected? You can't protect them, especially when they become adults, but you can still feel their pain as deeply as your own. You can still wonder if you did something to make them different from what you expected or intended. Because if they hadn't been "different," they wouldn't be hurt, would they? They'd be safe, wouldn't they? 

I wouldn't be embarrassed if they weren't different. (The sad truth to that statement is that I don't know that it's not true. Sometimes I'm not especially proud of my own shortcomings.)

It's very easy to say things like I'd never put up with that or He was raised wrong or If that was my kid, I'd...

You'd what? And think about it before you answer. Because when it comes right down to it, I don't believe you know for sure any more than I do. Instead, I'd rather go for empathy over accusation, kindness over vitriol, and--as always--truth over not. 

Congratulations to the Olympians. To the students and teachers who went back during these past days, go out and change the world. To you especially, have a good week. Be nice to somebody.