The Parent Trap
God has really blessed me with two great parents. I am the oldest of three children. When my parents are asked about me as a child, and the joking is all done, they will say I was a pretty good kid. In fact, they would probably say the same of all three of us children.
I’m sure there were moments when each of us three children tried my parents. Seeing some of my friends and others growing up, we were probably pretty good kids, but I’m sure my parents’ memory might have faded a little bit if they can’t remember some of the times we probably tested their patience. Maybe they just choose to remember the good parts.
I always looked up to my Dad with glowing eyes. He is great around people and if you are looking for a laugh, just start a conversation with him and I’m sure, eventually, his sarcastic sense of humor will come out. If you needed something fixed, he might not know how to fix it, but he would give it his best effort to fix it anyway.
I have always had the greatest respect for my Mom. Her sense of humor, even though she rarely shows it in public, can rival my father’s. She has the most caring heart. Don’t tell her you want her to look for something at yard sales, because, more than likely she is going to find it. Where you may just want one, you may end up with twenty.
My father is usually driven by his emotions. My Mom thinks things through and is greatly detailed. My Dad loves to be the center of attention and will share some of his personal side with you. My Mom is typically quiet in a crowd and she is very private. My Dad has a hard time sitting still. My Mom gets things done and she usually gets stuck with the thankless jobs.
As my parents age, I am beginning to really see how perfect they were for each other. Without being all gushy, they would do anything for the other partner. They care for each other in the way they know how to care. Yet, I don’t know if they completely understand how much the other one really loves them.
My Dad’s father died when he was very young. Calculating it, I believe his father must have died around the starting of World War II. At a time when women weren’t a huge part of the workforce, his Mom had to hit the workforce. He had a brother who died when he was very young and I’m not exactly sure where that brother fit into the pecking order alongside my Dad, his two sisters and his other, older brother.
My Dad’s Mom, Grannie as I would call her, tried as hard as she could, but she was forced to put the kids in an orphanage for a little while. My Dad was the last one she got back out. Despite this fact, my Dad believed his Mom walked on water. He knew how hard she tried and he had no doubts about her love for him. He would eat it up when she showed him any attention.
My Mom was the oldest of a boatload of kids. Her youngest brother, my uncle, is just a year and a half older than I am. My Mom’s Mom, my grandmother, drove a school bus and worked on the water crabbing and oystering, in addition to trying to raise her tribe. Most of what I remember about my grandmother, was that she was very sick. My grandmother died when I was about ten years old. That meant that my grandmother’s youngest child was about eleven or twelve years old when she died.
When I was young we went to my grandparents, my Mom’s parents, just about every weekend. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this was probably so my mother could help my grandfather raise the other kids while my grandmother battled the illness that would claim her life. My Mom probably continued that help after my grandmother died.
When you are young, it’s easy to believe the world is there to serve you. You almost believe it is your parents’ duty to get you to a happy adulthood. Sometimes we handcuff them by knowing exactly how they should do it. We pout when they don’t go about it the way we believe they should. In later years we even blame them for our shortcomings.
We can sometimes carry scars into adulthood about our raising. We promise ourselves and others that we will never be the type of parents our parents were. We will make sure that the things our parents missed doing for us will not be missing from our children’s lives.
Still, our children come up with their own list of things we just aren’t doing right. The vicious cycle continues. Somehow, no matter how hard a person tries, they never turn out to be the perfect parent.
On the other hand, a parent also has a hard time seeing their little ones as anything other than the child they raised. Independence is a goal most parents strive for, yet, when the child starts to succeed in that independence, part of the parent worries that the child will not need them anymore.
Another part of the parent wonders why their child is not focusing enough attention on them. After all, the parent has given up so much to help the child develop that life the child now claims. Why don’t the visits come more often? When the children have kids of their own, why don’t I, as their grandparent, get to see them enough?
The child can be confused by the parents’ vision of what their life should be. Isn’t it really their life to live and not their parents’? Why do other people seem to have more compassion for my issues than my parents do? Why do my boss, my colleagues, and my friends all see my talents and decision making ability better than my parents do?
As we age, and begin to experience the real world, a maturity overcomes us. It’s not planned. It just happens. We begin to see our parents in a different light. Our parents, too, begin to see us in a different light. We start to need each other again for totally different reasons.
This future President and his brother probably talked a lot about their parents. His parents were just plain people. There was nothing really special or different about them. His bloodline had never experienced crowns of royal ancestors. His parents never led a public meeting. His parents never owned a farm or a local store. They probably wouldn’t even have been considered middle class.
The future President’s humble beginnings began in a small town named Tampico. The first air he breathed was in a one-room rental that was over a bank. His father, Jack, took one look at him and said he looked like a fat little Dutchman. His mother, Nelle, must have thought that was endearing because “Dutch” would be the nickname she would call him.
Jack was cynical, almost to the point of being depressing at times. He could be funny, though. He could mimic people, especially their accents. He could also be sarcastic. Most of these features came out when he was drunk. He was drunk often.
Jack was also unemployed a lot. This didn’t help his family situation or his mood. Drinking was the method he used to find relief. Jack was Irish and his family line came from immigrant potato farmers that left Ireland during the potato famine.
Jack’s parents died from tuberculosis before his sixth birthday. He went to live with an Aunt, but it wasn’t a real good situation. Jack’s life was very hard and that hardened his soul.
The future President once went looking for a job in Chicago. He hitchhiked. He didn’t tell his father because he knew what he would say. If his father knew, he would have said, “You’re wasting your time. You’ll never find a job.” Jobs were very scarce at the time and his Dad was right for a little while, but when the future President did find a job, even in hard times, employment would never be a problem again.
I have begun to notice something different about the Old and New Testaments in the Bible. It just hit me this week. Maybe it is where the “Old” and “New” came from. When I look in the Old Testament I see a lot of stories about either older people or the views from older people’s eyes. When I look at the New Testament I see a lot of young people or views from younger people’s eyes.
One may argue with me on this point. They might remind me of the story of baby Moses being placed in the basket, or young Ruth taking care of her mother-in-law, or the beautiful Esther being the young bride, or even David and his sling shot taking down the huge giant. “All in the Old Testament,” they would claim. They might also remind me of the countless children who were begat in some of the very first Bible Books.
I can understand that argument and I don’t totally disagree with it. For me the story of Moses being laid in a basket, and sent down the river, is more about a mother’s faith and desperation. Ruth is shown as a mature lady who happens to be young. She stands out because she is probably different than the other girls her age, who would probably not have acted the same way.
Esther is the story of a hero, who stepped into that role, not by her planning, but by her faith. Her faith almost seems to amaze even the writer. The writer, who was probably a lot older than her is very impressed by her wisdom and the fact she respects, and follows her much older uncle’s suggestions.
You may have me on the David and the sling shot, or even most of David’s story in general. But that is just one young individual in the Old Testament compared to the many other older ones.
Our future President’s Mom was named Nelle. Nelle was probably the one who shaped the future President. Unlike his Dad, his Mom had no room for self-pity in her life or in the lives of her two boys. She did not just preach these words to her boys, and punish them when they veered off them, but she lived them, too. Nelle truly believed every child was a child of God.
Even though the family was poor, Nelle always found ways to help people who she felt were less fortunate. In her life, and in the lives for her kids, there was no room, or tolerance for prejudices no matter if they were religious, racial or financially based. The future President remembered that they would get slapped, by both parents, if they even displayed a hint of looking down on anyone.
One of the interesting parts of the future President’s relationship with his parents was that neither he, nor his brother, ever called his Mom or Dad, “Mom” or “Dad,” or anything remotely similar to that. They had no special pet names for them either. They simply called them Nelle and Jack.
Jack was always the big dreamer. He wanted to own a store. Nelle was the reasonable, hardworking parent who kept the family together and did odd jobs to help the family through the frequent unemployment periods of her husband.
Nelle also knew how to stretch the family budget. She could make a soup bone last a week. She would lie to the butcher and tell him that the liver she was getting was for the family cat. Actually it was what they ate for Sunday dinner. Another dinner item was oatmeal hamburgers. Despite these menus, the future President always remembered that they ate well.
But it is the stories that focus mainly on Jesus and his paving the path for our salvation that dominate most of the New Testament. Jesus was probably very young, just in His early thirties, when He was nailed to the cross and died for our sins.
So why would there be a generation transition between the two Testaments? I think there is a family story that tells it better than any other. First, we have to step out of our twenty-first century way of thinking and look at things through the society at the time.
Today, we have countries that have governments that are more organized and more involved in our daily lives. We have laws those governments impose and penalties for breaking those rules. Today, we have police officers who help enforce those rules. In Bible times, they also had laws and rules, but it was usually soldiers, if they were government edicts, and church elders, if they were divine edicts, that punished the breakers of those laws. Many, in Bible times, probably lived in areas far from the arms of those enforcers.
So, in Bible times, there were probably family leaders. When rules were broken there were probably friends or neighbors who would “report” misdeeds to either government or religious leaders in hopes that they would send enforcers to correct the problem. Families probably felt a lot of pressure to make sure their members “behaved” in order for others not to take control of their family. You think there is a lot of guilt coming from your parents today, it’s probably nothing compared to the guilt Bible parents leveled on their kids.
Then there was the issue of new members being invited to your clan. You had to make sure they were from the right stock. Not only did you not want them to bring trouble to your clan, you wanted to make sure they added value to your clan. In other words, they had to prove themselves.
The rules for these new members were usually very strict. Since this period of time was very much male dominated, and the males, not the females, stayed with their clans, most of these strict rules were directed to the new female members.
It is in that spirit that we begin our Bible story. A young man has found himself a woman who he wants to be his wife. He believes she is from good stock, but as was the custom of the time, she must prove herself worthy of entrance into his clan. He claims her and announces his intention to marry her. Now they will begin the long engagement period so they can each prove her worth.
Whoops! Something happens during this engagement period. The basic trust of the relationship is broken. The girl becomes pregnant. The man knows the child is not his. I’m sure the man is heartbroken because he believed he had very sound judgment for his feelings. Why in the world would she cheat on him?
Still, the man is a good man and he wishes her no harm. Instead of embarrassing her, he decides to quietly send her away while he searches for a believable excuse that will satisfy everyone. He is all set and ready to go, that is, until God stepped in.
When our future President stepped into the role of parent himself, he had a lot of Jack he was determined to do better with. He also greatly admired his Mom and took a great deal of her traits with him into adulthood.
One of the things the future President took with him into adulthood, that may have been similar to Jack, was the emotional scars of the disappointment of his parent(s). Jack probably felt the abandonment of his parents by their death when he was only five years old. This future President probably felt the scars of his father often choosing the bottle over a relationship with him.
To hide those scars, the future President tended not to get too emotionally attached to anyone. Looking back, many now see that he never had many really close friends. His children would look back and see a very caring father who was often emotionally distant.
When the young future President was approaching his twenty-ninth birthday, he married Jane. She was an actress who just played bit parts. They were very much in love. They would have two children, Maureen and they would adopted a son, Michael. They were both hoping to have the perfect family.
His wife seemed to be adjusting to her role as his wife and the queen of his castle. She, like him, came from a family where she felt abandoned by one of her parents, her mother. They seemed like the perfect match.
Shortly after they were married, the Second World War began. He joined the army, but because of his poor eyesight he was assigned to a noncombat role in the army air force intelligence unit in Los Angeles. His wife went back to work as an actress.
This was the start of his marriage breakdown. His wife was getting bigger and bigger roles and became a huge star. His jobs were getting smaller and smaller. One of the jobs he could find was a controversial role that somewhat ended his chosen career.
Without that high standing job, and with his wife obviously outshining him, he became very sick and nearly died of viral pneumonia. While he was in the hospital with that illness, and without him realizing it, his wife entered another hospital across town. She would have a miscarriage of the child she was carrying.
The future President would also become very involved in his job’s union, even becoming its president. The countless babble of union talk and politics repulsed his wife. It was just too much for the marriage to handle and they would divorce.
Mary, the Biblical woman, is the first to hear from God. God tells her it is His Son that she is carrying. Mary’s reaction must have been: “What?” Then it probably turned to: “Why me?” After that she probably claimed: “This is too much for me. I can’t do this alone! Joseph doesn’t want anything to do with me. In fact, he is sending me away to raise the child myself.”
I imagine God’s conversation with her went something like this: “Mary, I will get you through this. All you have to do is to have faith that I will give you all the tools you need to get through it. Where you see a problem, I see an opportunity for you to shine. Believe in Me and watch the miracles that will happen.”
God must have been quite convincing because Mary seems to be excited about the new child coming into her life. Next, God goes to work on Joseph. Again, He must have been quite convincing because Joseph, too, doesn’t seem to worry anymore about what everyone else thinks.
It is through parts of the New Testament that we see some of the struggles in raising a child. Jesus doesn’t check in with His parents, at the Temple, when he is twelve and gets left there while all the tribe, or family, heads back home. The parents don’t understand why the child wasn’t more considerate and didn’t listen. Jesus, the child, can’t understand why His parents don’t understand Him.
As Jesus is making the transition into adulthood and His ministry, it appears that it is His Mom who pushes him into His first miracle: changing the water into wine at the wedding feast. His Mom is pushing Him into His own adult life.
Later on, Jesus has moved into that adulthood. He is in a crowd preaching. Someone tells Him that His Mother and His brother are outside waiting for Him to come to them. Jesus responds, “This crowd that you see around me, they are my mother and my brothers.” I imagine Mary might have thought, “What has happened to my little boy?”
Jesus then reaches the final transition while He is hanging on the cross. He tells John to take care of His Mother. That seems to be how their parent-child cycle closes.
Actor, Ronald Reagan’s acting career seemed to come to a close, at least from his more high profile movies, shortly after his return from World War II. He would star in the movie That Hagen Girl. Reagan pressed the writers to change the script, but they would have none of that. The movie involved a high school girl who townspeople believe is the illegitimate daughter of a former resident and lawyer. In her first adult role, Shirley Temple would play the girl and Ronald Reagan would play the lawyer.
Reagan would eventually find love again. He would marry Anne Frances Robbin on March 4, 1952. You may know her better by her stage name: Nancy Davis, or after they were married, Nancy Reagan.
Nancy and Ronald Reagan would have two children of their own: Patti and Ron, Junior. Patti Davis, Ronald’s daughter, doesn’t remember her father being gone a lot, but rather she remembers “gaps when he wasn’t there.” Reagan was very involved in his political career at the time.
Patti would also play into the media’s hands by publically disagreeing with her father on some of his policy issues. She would say, “…I am part of a generation that rebelled against the idea of being anyone’s child, and I was one of its voices.” She would continue, “Older, we step out of the shadows and sing lullabies to our parents, melodies recalled from the very childhoods we railed against.”
Later in life she would express regret, not that she differed from her father in her beliefs, but that she felt that it was not the proper platform to discuss those differences. She would state, “My first mistake was thinking I could handle it.” She believes she came across as just an angry daughter.
Reagan, for his part, never voiced a single displeasure at his daughter’s actions. He did ask Patti to come to his office to explain his views to her. She flatly rejected those offers claiming she already knew what his views were. Looking back she realized that he wasn’t trying to change her, or even offering to change his views, but he was trying to keep their lines of communication open. Her misunderstanding of his motives lead to many bouts of silence toward him.
Patti seems to speak for the group of Reagan kids in explaining that he seemed to care for them all very much, but didn’t seem to provide them much in the way of emotional support. As a child, they all probably wondered why their father could not have been different and given them that gift. As they became adults, I think they came to realize he just didn’t know how to give them that gift.
Patti would say following her father’s death, in her book The Long Goodbye, “In learning to grieve, we grow into the people we were always meant to be.” It’s too bad we have to take so long to figure that out.
Life is funny. One day you are someone’s child and the next thing you know, you have children of your own. As the cycle of life runs its course, you come to realize an amazing fact. That fact is that your parents, like you, are people too. Their lives have made them, and you, who you, and they, are. Perfection never comes because we are always working on who we are. Our parents are no different. Our children are no different.
Whatever stage of life you are in, respect the generation before you and the one following you. No one has escaped this life without struggles and those struggles help us develop into the individuals we become. We are not always the best pupils of those lessons and our application of those lessons can cause others to question our intentions. Sometimes we need to look past our own perceptions and try to understand that those who love us are trying to do the best they can with what they’ve got.
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Thank You for planting me in such a great family. Thank You that both of my parents have had the chance to witness my growing into an old age myself. Thank You for the opportunity to become a parent and even a grandparent. Amen.
