“I am Superwoman, Put an S on my chest” - Alicia Keys
Continuing my theme of letting go, my wife is starting to do a lot of little things which are showing her confidence and need for independence from going grocery shopping alone to resuming her exercise. It is a simple thing sometimes but I can trace this renewed energy just from a simple invite from some of the “popular moms” in our kids school who asked her to join them for an evening out. It really made my wife feel good to still fit in. I know her confidence wiill ebb over the next few months as she goes through her recontstruction and deal with both the emotional and physical scars.
Interestingly enough we had the same conversation about confidence with our own children. We want to teach them humbleness. While both are well liked by their classmates we want to teach them to be humble individuals and help them for the inevitable day when they receive rejection and teach them how to handle it.
Part of gaining confidence is providing exposure to as much as possible. As a parent it is our job to show our children as much as we can while providing guidance. As we go through our lives our parenting takes on many forms that are influenced by our own experiences. We sometimes learn by giving our children things that our parents couldn’t give us or providing many of those same experiences. For me, I miss those moments with my dad and this weekend I was able to take my son to his 1st Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford football), but it is was more than just a game. As I say, it is always the experience of getting there, and taking a 9 year old to Berkeley is always an eye-opening experience. Blondies Pizza, Top Dog, the homeless, Rasputin’s Records, etc are all part of the mystique after taking Bart to Berkeley. For our son (and some day our daughter) the experience started with listening to the Cal Band.
After listening to the Cal Band we marched up to the stadium with them. The smile and laughter that he had watching the band made me tear up. 30 years ago that was me with my dad. I only hope my dad felt as satisfied with giving me that same experience and I showed him the same amount of gratitude. The casual conversation about the history of the schools and the area were part of a great day of bonding that hopefully will create many pleasant memories for my son because they sure did for me.
My wife and I are still being cautious about the post-surgery experience and what it will mean to us. I think we know how it will be physically but psychologically we’ve been talking about some of our concerns and issues each night. We will have to work through it, but at the moment we aren’t sure what those exact issues will be. What we do know is that we have to be observant of each other’s behavior and let each other know when we observe anything.
One thing we did agree upon though is that leading into this Thanksgiving, we will not be at a loss for things we will be thankful for.
