How Becoming a Parent Changed Me

Becom­ing a par­ent does change things. I’ve heard that near­ly my entire life, but no one has been able to suc­cess­ful­ly explain what the hell the state­ment means. It just rings a bit hol­low as an unex­plained tru­ism. How­ev­er! I think I’ve fig­ured out a cou­ple of ways to explain things; or, at least, explain how becom­ing a par­ent changed me.

Nostalgia

Watch­ing Bram dis­cov­er the world allows me to dis­cov­er it again. I used to boast that I’d nev­er lose a child­like sense of won­der, but watch­ing the lit­tle bear wig out over a train or an orange car shows me just how much I’d lost of that amaze­ment. One of the com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and unde­served ben­e­fits of being a par­ent is the abil­i­ty to relive those first moments of won­der vic­ar­i­ous­ly. This vic­ar­i­ous feel­ing is sweet­ened and enhanced by a nos­tal­gia born of remem­ber­ing things you’d for­got­ten you’d known. Being with Bram when he saw a freighter leave the mouth of the Cuya­hoga from the Coast Guard Sta­tion at Whiskey Island pro­vid­ed me with lay­ers and lay­ers of emo­tion stretch­ing from my own child­hood: nos­tal­gia at that lev­el of enthu­si­asm, the joy of remem­ber­ing some moments of my own tod­dler expe­ri­ences; and into the present: vic­ar­i­ous­ly expe­ri­enc­ing that emo­tion again, grat­i­tude at being present for your own child’s moment of satori, and pride that you in some way facil­i­tat­ed the process.

Extrap­o­lat­ing from here, I imag­ine that grand­par­ents feel much of the same; a third chance to expe­ri­ence child­hood with the added bonus of a sec­ond chance to expe­ri­ence par­ent­ing.

Reference Manual

I’ve gained a whole new per­spec­tive of appre­ci­a­tion for the par­ent­ing exam­ples of my par­ents. When I find myself in a sit­u­a­tion where I’m unsure of how to pro­ceed, I can think back to what worked and did­n’t work on me, and adapt those lessons to what­ev­er I’m try­ing to fig­ure out with lit­tle bear. If I find myself sec­ond-guess­ing or unsure of my deci­sions, I know I’m just a phone call away from a total pro.

So, par­ent­ing has changed my life by the addi­tion of con­text; vic­ar­i­ous nos­tal­gia by allow­ing me to com­pare my child­hood to my son’s & a whole new ref­er­ence man­u­al of behav­iors com­ing from what I observed about par­ent­ing before I became one myself. I under­stand that some folks don’t get why oth­ers would want to be par­ents, and that’s cool. For me, it’s already pro­vid­ed a wealth of new and old expe­ri­ences that I nev­er would have expect­ed, and that I expect will nev­er end.