Watching my youngest daughter recently at a school play, I marveled at her presence among her peers, and at the unconditional love she always extends to me.
I'm not sure if she is aware that I am older than most of her friends' Dads; that my "career" options as an older writer have become increasingly narrow in recent years; or that neither she nor I can count on me living long enough to be a Grandpa for her kids should any significant health issue intervene.
If she is aware of any of these factors, or similar problematic aspects of the structure of our relationship, she never offers any hint of that. As far as she ever expresses her feelings for me, I am made to feel perfect.
The feelings are mutual, of course, but our 51-year-age gap has always worried me terribly. At the time she arrived, I was married to her Mom, with a range of promising career options, and plenty of assets, including savings and real estate.
There was no reason for me to expect anything but an average middle-class future for my daughter, or even perhaps -- if certain moves proved to be as lucrative as they appeared potentially to be at the time -- better than that, a decidedly upper-middle-class life.
I recall comforting myself at her birth, and assuaging my guilt, because despite my relatively advanced age I knew our financial circumstances were such that I would be able to raise her in a manner that mitigated the hazards of age and rewarded her with a much more comfortable future than her older siblings had endured.
That was before dot.bomb.
That was before my divorce.
That was before the recession.
Over a decade after she arrived, I look at her lovely face and her inscrutable expressions, wondering if she knows how much of that potential has evaporated since she was small.
If she perceives what a struggle our day-to-day life has become, relative to my expectations back then, she never lets on.
If she knows how small everything I can provide sometimes feels now, she never lets me stay with that.
She's my main shopping partner. She is always up for a trip to the grocery market or the discount clothes store. We shop for bargains; she is at good at reading labels as I am, easily, and on top of price issues, she is a firm environmentalist, so she often points our various ways we can shop in a more sustainable manner.
At her school, she has proven to be a driving force, despite her still-young age, in an ecology club. She doesn't just mouth these values; she lives them.
She's a vegetarian by her own choice, and has, in general, extremely strong beliefs about a lot of things.
She suffers fools with disdain, and has little time for Republicans or other oldsters who delay action on problems like global warming when she knows it will be her generation -- not theirs -- that will have to deal with the circumstances.
She has no particular sympathy for those who show their age by becoming more hardened in their ways, less tolerant toward others, less open-minded about new initiatives to make the world a more equitable place.
All of this by age 11!
As I gazed from the back of the auditorium during her play, I felt a sense of admiration for her well up inside of me. Plus a gradual awareness that though I may not get that far with her into her own adventures as an adult (after all, I can do the math), I'm confidant that long after I am gone, I will be extremely proud of my youngest child -- for who she is, for how she lives, and for how she will lead by example.
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1 comment:
She sounds like a wonderful young woman. I especially like the way she loves you unconditionally- and that shows a lot in a child- it shows her unselfish nature and her pure heart.
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