Letter from the North Country

Portland, OR

The plane had to make two passes, never a fun experience, but finally we landed up here earlier this evening.

There's something about grandchildren. It is visceral. You've already raised one of their parents; doing everything in your power to protect her, then give her to the world, and hope the world appreciates her perfection.

Then, she has a son, and in your (now aged) eyes, he is a creature of the rarest beauty. In this case, a little boy so charming, energetic, smart and athletic that by the age of two years and four months, you're ready to declare him a future President of the U.S. (after he is a Hall of Famer in at least three sports, fluent in ten languages, and inventor of several products that help avert global climate change.)

Such is the love of a Grandpa for his Grandson.

***

Parenting is, of course, much more luck and art than science, but there is a growing body of useful research to help guide those of us engaged in this work. And parenting truly is work, however you define it. I don't know of any aspect of living that causes more stress.

This in no way diminishes the challenges facing those among us who, by choice or fate, do not turn out to be parents. This is still widely considered an unnatural outcome for a human being, but many people are childless.

These people, in fact, are among the few who may have the resources, by virtue of their lack of the obligation by blood to take care of their own youngsters, to help all of us take care of all the children in our society who need help tonight.

We have some deeply flawed and arbitrary social policies that virtually guarantee that certain people's lives will turn out to be much less successful than they might have been.

The problem for those of us who have our own children to support is that the vast majority of us never get far ahead enough of the financial curve to donate resources, work, talent to those kids who are in fact far more endangered by the system's cruel logic than are our own.

This contradiction is not lost on many parents. We do not not see the need out there. It's just that until we take care of our own, which is an increasingly difficult proposition in a world that reduces our prospects to chasing scarcities, how can we responsibly devote ourselves to helping all of those other kids -- the ones without adequate family support?

We see but we cannot help them.

A well-employed adult without others dependent on them, however, has the required extra bandwith to do so. That is one way this world could become a better place, the purported goal of so many of us. I mean no offense to anyone by this post. It's just a suggestion for the random 40-50-60 something who is settling in and watching movies with their friends at night rather than asking whether they just might be able to help an endangered child down the block learn better math skills.

We have more than a few of these folks in San Francisco, BTW.

Oh yes, President Obama would be proud of you if you gave these thoughts more than a dismissive wave...

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