What does it mean to be a parent?

Before we become parents, we all have associations in our minds as to what it means to enter parenthood. Good or bad, we place ourselves within a mental framework and give new meaning to what the 18+ years following the birth of our first child will be like.

There are a million and one circumstances that are true, legitimate fears for first time parents. Forget all that. Forget the health concerns and social ills of our day. Forget preparing our children for moral dilemmas and teaching them to make ethical choices so they don’t have to grow up to be grown-ups with regrets. Forget adolescence and first loves and zits. Forget it all. Those were not even thoughts in my pea-sized brain. For the longest time, all I can remember being worried about was the fact that I just didn’t want to lose any sleep. Wow. No wonder my world overwhelms me.

Of course after we bring our children home for the first time, we actually get a glimpse at what this parenting business is all about. So helpless, wrapped in a blanket and lying in a crib-that is if we’re brave enough to lay them down at all. Can’t eat. Can’t move. Can’t speak. Every element of their existence depends upon the job we do as their parents.

How will we ever interpret those cries? Those looks they get on their faces as their cheeks turn red and they furrow their brow. Though it seems we will never be good at this gig, we soon come to realize that there is really no one who knows our children better than do we. Mom is good at bathing and feeding and singing him to sleep. Dad can get him to burp like a Russian sailor and to stop crying when nothing else will do the trick. Maybe we’re getting the hang of this parenting thing after all.

And just as we start to feel comfortable with the stage we are in, they grow out of it and give us a whole new set of symptoms, a completely new collection of concerns. Why does he cry every night at nine? When will he sleep from dusk until dawn? Can’t we just give this kid table food already? And on and on we go.

But time passes quickly. We’re celebrating birthdays and holidays and the changing of the seasons. Then one day, we look up, and it’s time to enroll them for their first day of school.

Cooper was ready to go to school the moment he turned four…last October, in the middle of the semester. I explained that he had to wait until the new school year began, and when the day arrived to go visit his new classroom, he went willingly, excitedly, and hid behind my leg for the first 15 minutes.

These are the days that a parent knows will come, and still, when they do, we seem surprised. Surprised that our oldest child, just born yesterday, is old enough to start school. Surprised that he will be spending five days a week with children we don’t even know. Surprised that it is the beginning of a life of school bells and schedules and activities, most of which don’t include his mother. Surprised that I am so ill-prepared to send my baby off into the world, that I’d actually consider home schooling. Well, I said consider.

And as it happens, only two short days later, the decision was made to enter the world of Little League. A ball player from the beginning, the legendary Hall of Fame as his namesake and the Yankees in his blood, it is unbelievably time for the challenge and excitement of organized sport. Not backyard ball with mom and dad. Not hit it till you like where it lands. Not run from home to home every time you hit the ball, but competitive, score keeping, don’t pass the runner in front of you, tag up on a fly ball, what in the world does a force mean-baseball, with an adult pitching, of course. The love is there. The competitive drive is in high gear. So here we go. Just one step further into this crazy world of parenting.

I know things won’t slow down from here. We’ll be singing in music programs and running in track meets and filling our walls with artwork that a mom just can’t bear to throw away. We’ll squabble over homework and doing chores and always having to let the little brother tag along. We’ll endure algebra and Aristotle and the onset of adolescence. And we’ll figure it all out together.


I no longer worry about missing a little sleep at night. I’ve got more pressing events to plan for and more important people to tend to. I read; I play; I build. I kiss; I hug; I laugh. I insist; I beg; I plead, and yes, sometimes I yell. But I’ve learned that being a parent doesn’t mean always being prepared for what these kids of ours throw at me. It just means making an unbelievable, get dirty, sacrifice-the-body, do-it-for-the-team, diving attempt--no matter where I end up landing.

And that’s All in a day’s work!