A Future I Can't Imagine

Two weeks around family at the holidays gives one plenty to reflect upon. There is nothing like the places of one's youth and the similar but strangely divergent lives of one's siblings to bring one's mind back to the days of yore. For the longest time, seeing family was just what I did. Of course, as a kid I saw my siblings and parents everyday. I woke up with them in the morning, went to bed under the same roof with them at night, ate meals with them, shared household duties, fought, laughed, cried, bonded, threw punches, showed up for good times and bad, defended each other, challenged each other, and influenced each other, both positively and negatively. We shaped each other. And yet, we all turned out incredibly different. 

I moved away from home when I was 22 and have only lived in my hometown for one year since--and that was ten years ago. I've gotten home less and less as jobs, relationships, money, and physical space have come between me and Louisville, KY. I get home about once a year now, which makes the experience more surreal. What used to be as normal and unconscious as breathing is now cause for introspection. A lot changes in a year. All of my siblings have kids. I have a kid. We're graying, balding. We have different responsibilities and interests. We pay attention to things that went unnoticed when we knew each other best. What makes it particularly surreal for me is bringing my wife and child to my hometown. I met my wife in New Mexico in 2002 and my daughter was born in Seattle two years ago next month. Neither of them have a connection with Kentucky the way I do, so to see them in my parents' house, juxtaposed to these people I've known since before I was my daughter's age affects me in the same way that staring at a familiar word for too long makes it look odd. It shouldn't be strange. My wife has been coming home with me for 12 years now. She knows my family about as well as I do at this point, but she'll never know how we've changed from back in the day until now. In the same way, I'll never know the difference between her brother and parents now versus thirty-five plus years ago. 

During the reflection period that has followed our most recent two week holiday visit I've been considering who my daughter will be when she's my age (and should we be so lucky, what her sibling will become). Until I was in my twenties, it never crossed my mind that I would be living 3000 miles away from my family married to a woman from the middle of Missouri, and toting my child home for the holidays to meet her relatives (aka: many of the people who made me who I am). It certainly never occurred to me that I'd be a stay-at-home dad while my wife worked full time to support us. In fact, most of my current life is outside the bounds of what I imagined it would be as a kid. And, I'm happy about this. Very happy. However, if I could not have imagined my current life, how can I ever hope to imagine my daughter's. And if I can't imagine her future, how do I prepare her for it? 

Of course, there are people who are very attached to their lives as they are. They can't imagine a life outside of what they grew up with and so they make no decisions that stray from what they grew up with. For some people, this leads to a perfectly happy existence aside from becoming very disgruntled when life moves them in directions they didn't see coming. For others, it leads to a miserable rut that seems inescapable. I could go this route in raising my daughter. I could give her a template of traditional life and skills that lead to success in a traditional life and tell her to be disciplined in willing this template into reality. She might be one of those who are perfectly happy with traditional life. It would certainly be the easiest answer for me. 

However, I have to remind myself that I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school K-12, went to church every Sunday, said the rosary while driving with my Papa, no matter how far we were going, and now I'm an atheist. I grew up in a white bread culture where suits and ties and respectable haircuts and work and family were what good honest Americans did with their lives. In college, I grew my hair to my shoulders, switched my major from accounting to English, became a backpacking instructor, married a fellow backpacking instructor with dreadlocks and a nose ring, and never looked back. My parents raised me for the life they knew and did so with the best of their knowledge about how one succeeds in such a life. They couldn't imagine my current life either. And how could they? This is the greatest evidence I have for not getting too attached to what my daughter will become--I have no idea what she will become. And how could I? So, it makes no sense for me to get overly attached to what she will look like or believe in or do for a living. I have no control over that, in the same way that my parents had no control over me becoming something different than what they thought I'd become. I'm not a bad person. In fact, I consider myself a very good person by most measurable standards. My wife and I are doing well financially. She's doing what she always wanted to do for a living. I'm writing novels, which I've always wanted to do. We make eating well and exercising and being socially involved in our community a priority. We try to support healthy, progressive causes...we're good people. I'm confident of that. And this is the best evidence I have that regardless of how attached I am to my daughter becoming one way or another, she likely will become a decent, contributing member of society if she is raised by decent, contributing members of society. Whether or not I put the fear of God into her and beat her over the head with lists of values and numbered principles and nit-pick how she dresses or wears her hair or condescend her worldview or stifle her philosophical pondering, she is likely going to turn out okay if she has role models who turned out okay. 

And this brings me to the point I originally wanted to make, which is that I have to be a person first no matter how much my instincts and culture are telling me I need to be a dad first and a person second. My daughter needs to see what a happy, healthy adult looks like more than she needs me sculpting her into some statue of success that, in my experience, has made very few people truly happy and in many ways is far from healthy. Can I tell you anything about the established rules and regulations of the Catholic Church? Nope. Did I get the gist of being a decent person by having the opportunity to be around decent human beings? Yep. Do I have positive memories of parents, teachers, and community members discouraging my dreams and beliefs because they didn't fit the template of the only life these individuals could imagine? Nope. Do I have a wonderful life because these people cared enough to even listen to my dreams and beliefs and steer me toward what they thought would be best for me? Yep. 

So, I'm shooting for the bigger picture stuff with my daughter. Skills, development, safety, respect for herself and others, honesty, integrity, self-reliance, grit, respect for evidence and logic, a desire to explore and learn and question, etc. What she does with it, I can't imagine, and I truly don't want to. I just hope she comes home for the holidays to visit her family.