Warm Recollections #35
More from the Bitz Files
As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are random cullings from thirty years of notes files…
There are times in life when your emotions feel like a car where the shock absorbers are shot, and you wince at every bump in the road; or like a thumb in the early stags of arthritis, where it can still perform all the movements — good and bad, happy and sad — but you feel it scraping, a little painfully, on all of them.
Parenting to the crowd: not only being a better parent when there are strangers around, but talking to the child in a fashion that’s at least partly designed to be overheard.
Shrill spring sunshine.
I wrote this before I had a child: “The last time your father hugs you as his child, rather than as an adult to whom he is related.”
Now I have one, I know this moment will never come.
A young, spindly-legged dog tottered around the courtyard, quickly, but via a vague and pin-balling route, as if controlled by someone who can’t see the space and is navigating it from memory.
As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.
My oldest is 51, my youngest is 41. I will never stop hugging them as my children. I had no idea having babies that I was on the hook for more than the obligatory 18 years I had been told by my mother. I know I will be their mom, and all that that means, long past my time here on earth.
Whoa, these recollections hit hard. In particular, the emotions analogy and the parental hug. How dare you make me tear-up on a Wednesday morning? Perhaps the ‘hug’ hit harder because at the moment I am in a shock-absorber-less car, feeling a little like the spindly-legged dog is driving, experiencing the scraping viscerally (metaphor mixology, sorry). Both my sons are adults, have been for quite some time. They now have children of their own and yet I still hug them as my child. Always will, even when they don’t respond in the way they used to. I think it’s the snuggling I miss. Maybe there was a last time for that and I missed it. Just to say – I am totally in awe of the power of the words in these Warm Recollections. Their impact outweighs their number. Thank you.