Being a parent (as I'm sure has already been said; I haven't bothered to read the thread, but it's the answer so expectable it's practically a cliche).
You do not realize how much it's possible to love someone, until you're a parent.
It's like your heart is not in you anymore; it's in them.
Being a parent of babies and small children made me love babies and small children. All babies and small children.
It made me a ferocious advocate for them all, for their rights and interests.
I never imagined- never dreamed- that instead of tapering off as my kids grew older, grew up... this terrible, consuming love would increase exponentially.
I assumed- in my own youth and ignorance- that by the time they were older kids, teenagers, adults, this excrutiatingly intense emotion I felt toward them would naturally diminish, until ultimately we would separate emotionally, and they could go off and live their grown-up lives, and I could live mine.
I thought I loved babies and small children because they were innocent, had never felt hate or hurt anyone.
But now my kids are almost grown men; they are not innocent. They have felt hate. They have hurt people (including each other. And me).
And I love them a thousand times more than I did when they were babies.
If they had died as babies, I would have been terribly sad for a long time, but I would have survived.
If they died now, I would never survive. I would not last an hour in this world without them.
They are so much more now than they were when they were sweet, innocent babies and toddlers.
It's like the babies die giving birth to the children they will become, who in turn die giving birth to the men they eventually grow into.
At each stage, I suppose it's possible to grieve for what has been lost- for the innocence. And I've known plenty of parents who do grieve for their lost babies. I don't think my dad, for instance, ever got over the loss of the extraordinary child I was; I don't think he's ever quite forgiven the adult I am for replacing that child. I think he feels cheated.
But with my kids... I love them so much, so much, that I can't care about the gone babies or the lost children or the innocence lying cheerfully discarded in the dirt.
They are more than that now.
And I've invested more into them. I've invested a lifetime into them.
How could I miss those babies, who I'd scarcely even known at the time, by comparison? Who I'd invested less than a year of my life into?
These boys are waaaaay more important and valuable than the babies they were, however good those babies smelled and felt to me, however cute and innocent they might have been.
When you have a child, it's like your heart leaves your body and goes into theirs.
But i always thought you'd get it back, at some point.
Now I know that you never do.
And that's why it's so scary having teenagers. They are out there running around like crazy people, off on all kinds of dangerous sprees, and they are holding your heart hostage while they do it. And they don't even know. And wouldn't even care if they did know.
They'd just say it was your own fault, for treating them like babies, for not letting go.
They won't understand until they have their own kids that you can't let go. It isn't a matter of letting go. They have your heart. It's permanent. They can't give it back, and you aren't capable of taking it back. They will have it until the day you die; all you can do is hope they take good care of themselves, and therefore, of your heart.
This has made me a more loving person because in every thug on the street, in every criminal, in every man... I see a grown-up child with a mother somewhere, who loves him as much as I love my boys and who suffers terribly when he fails to make good choices.
I guess it's like that saying, "A face only a mother could love..."?
I am a mother, and therefore, I love them all.
Or at least, I recognize that they all are lovable and precious, to someone.
And I hope the world will see that my boys, my men, are lovable and precious as well, at least to me... and I hope it will treat them kindly.
If this doesn't make sense to any of you, it's probably because you don't have grown up kids yet. Or possibly I'm just neurotic.
I do not understand the blasé attitude some parents seem to take toward their grown children; although sometimes I envy it.
