Why?
I have no earthly idea. They're as demanding as my sons, if not moreso. Just as loud, if not moreso.
And, well, they're brighter. Perhaps I worry about them less.
Mostly I'll address our eldest, but my younger daughter deserves some ink. Camille's 10, and completed 5th grade a week ago, earning the President's Award for Academic Excellence. She earned a 3.5 GPA and scored in the 90th percentile on her standardized testing. Carol and I are very proud of her. The notion that anyone related to me would earn any award stamped with even the canned signature of the President of the US is mind-boggling to me.
Anyway, our eldest turns 15 in a couple days. This inevitable event leads the parent to the inevitable reflection upon All That Has Come Before.
October of 1994, my wife and I were newly-married and living in Virginia Beach while she attended grad school. I was a college-educated landscaper, ambitious as ever, but my back was strong and I liked the work. I guess we had a plan to have kids sometime down the road, but it obviously wasn't rock-solid (read your instruction booklets, people). I vividly recall sitting in our living room on a glorious Sunday afternoon looking at the EPT results. Carol jumped out of the sofa when the purple line showed in full, thinking that meant a negative result. For a change, I actually read the instructions and realized that she was completely erroneous.
Whoops!
We were both about 23 at the time. No house, no realized prospects, but with a suddenly-new list of priorities. Pregnancy made us dead to most of our friends, especially out-of-town college buds who got together to drink in the post-college transition between school and life. I think everyone was happy for us, but the prevailing expression was "better you guys than us."
My grandmother, and later my father, always said you knew who your friends were when the chips were down.
Carol had one more year to finish up, and she did so, landing a position as a GS-7 with the Medicaid branch of what was then HCFA. That alone was huge, as it guaranteed a 4-year ladder from GS-7 to GS-12, there was a future after all.
Me? I took a job with Chem-Lawn (ambitions, again) and worked myself to death in the Virginia heat until we moved back to the DC area, where I hooked up with the Montgomery County school system and taught.
Sarah was born on June 17th, 1995, a month before we left Virginia Beach. A beautiful, perfect, healthy baby girl. I recall the primary emotion being relief. I think at the time it was my greatest accomplishment. (which isn't saying much, obviously, since amoeba manage to procreate).
She's grown up fast, though when I realize it's been 15 years it sounds like a long time. As for the struggle - and there have been many - my family saw us through all of it and helped us get our feet. We'll always owe my mom and dad for giving us a roof to live under and Carol's mom and dad for babysitting Sarah so that we could work or go to classes. When the chips were down, family came through in a way that friends could not.
Not really knocking our friends, to borrow a comic-book cliche, life "hit us hard and fast," and our friends were smarter about it than we were. They knew they didn't have the means to do the job of parenting, and postponed it until they were ready. I think it works better that way, to be as prepared as you can be prior to entering the next phase of life. Carol and I had to grow up quick - perhaps a consequence of our rashness or hubris, and becoming 23-year old parents was a socially isolating experience.
Then, of course, came the real work. Raising a child from infancy onward is a life sentence. We endured the process of learning who this new little tyrant was, what she needed from us, and ...well....everything changed. You adjust. You deal. You move on. In between all of those morose and sober platitudes you have fun, too. Sometimes, just sometimes, parenthood is really like those commercials on TV where everyone's clean and healthy and happy running in the sunshine of a spring afternoon smiling and laughing.
Or- hell- maybe it was all just a bunch of stuff that happened, and it's worked out fine. She's 15 and a bright cookie, has already lettered in her school's Marching Band. We're proud of her, and completely vexed by her at the same time. Typical teenaged crap. But a good kid, we love her alot.
ah the good ole days. I will never forget how much fun it was watching you pick out a pale green dress for our baby girl. Feminine but not too frilly. I will also never forget interviewing for a job 8 months pregnant. The K street lobbying firm simply didn't know how to respond. (When preparing to intervew for internships, I was told to not wear my engagement ring. Marriage was a liability. No hope for married and pregnant.) I knew "my condition" would eliminate me from the running for that job, but it was fun watching them squirm. The government civil servant was unphased, offered me a job, and agreed to put me on leave until August. Thank goodness for the threat of a hiring freeze.
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