How dare I love you?
Rarely do I feel more unmoored than when I look at my son right after he’s done something he knows he shouldn’t have, something I won’t like or will scold him for. I waver with a suffusion of emotion and physical response. I am frustrated, even angry at his actions; I am awed at his tenacity; I am also ferociously, overwhelmingly in love with him.
This trifurcation happens instantly, together, all the time. I knew this to be possible in myself, and have come to accept this fundamental quirk of human existence better in the past two years than ever before (thanks, therapy), but seeing it applied externally so often brings with it challenges that the role of a parent must contend with.
When Evren misbehaves and knows that he has, he responds urgently, “Do I listen?” which twists the words he constantly hears from his parents: “You’re not listening!” He tries his best to make sense of the constant stimuli around him, but when he daydreams his way towards an oncoming vehicle or “hides” in a bush down the street because he desperately wants me to play Hide and Seek with him, it’s hard to fault his intentions or four-year-old logic even as I slowly go insane trying to will him to safe harbor.
But there’s a more fascinating element to this: I am constantly watching him change, in close to real time, while willing myself to do the same for his benefit. I strive to be a good father, but I simultaneously strive to be a better one, an improving one, a malleable object in his hands rather than the other way around. I don’t see him as a fixed thing, just that his arc of change is more linear and predictable than mine. I’m 41 years old; when I change, I do so against my own self-interest, abutting a discomfort that has grown smooth with use.
The other day, as I was dropping Evren at school, I overheard a mother saying to her son, a sarcastic response to something I didn’t catch, “How dare I love you? How dare I love you?” She repeated it like a mantra, an aphorism she hoped would sink into his young brain. That whatever he’d said or done, her only plausible response was that she did it for him and because of him. I’ve been thinking about this phrase often over the past days. How dare I love you? I don’t exist but for you.
Being with my kids, taking on the role of parent, of caregiver, has given me an appreciation for my own body and its relationship to behavior. I must be rested and nourished to be present with them and to present myself to them as a role model. I am rarely able to maintain even a semblance of that idealized man, but because I’ve reached those heights and felt their positive effects on my kids, I know how it feels. I want it all the time, even when I can’t grab it through the fog.
There’s a photo on my lock screen now, a selfie from the park last weekend, when we were all smiling and happy and exhausted. It was a rare respite after a chaotic day, crystallized into a moment that I’ll be able to reflect on indefinitely.
How dare I love you, my son, who I can pick up in my arms like sand, who runs away but always wants me to follow, who jumps off mountains and needs me to kiss it better, who steals my food and doesn’t realize that’s exactly what I want. Be near me but not too close so that I can always see you succeed, and be here when you don’t.