Loving parent,loving children

There is no friendship,no love,like that of the parent for the child.------Henry Ward Beecher(American clergyman,social reformer)

While we try to teach our children all about life,our children teach us what life is all about.------Angela Schwindt(American home-schooling mom)

Preview

The relationship between children and parents can be one of the most difficult, and yet ,one of the most important relationships of all. To reach maturity, the child must pass through the many changes of childhood before stepping into the role of an adult. Imagine how difficult it is for your parents to change,too! They have known you as a dependent baby, adolescent and teenager. Changing, learing and growing, each generation marches through the stages of life. In those moments when the world around us melts away, we can clearly see the loving feelings between parents and children. Time slows down and back again. Think about your own parents and love you share. What special moment, either easy or hard, have shown the love between you and your parents? Now that you are away at the university, what will you do to help your parents begin to see you as an adult? How will you honor and sustain the love you share?

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A child's clutter awaits an adult's return

I watch her back her new truck out of the driveway. The vehicle is too large, too expensive. She'd refused to consider a practical car with good gas efficiency and easy to park. It's because of me, I think. She bought it to show me that she could.

"I'm 18," she'd told me so often that my teeth ached."I am an adult!"

I thought, is that ture? Just yesterday you watched some cartoons. What changed between yesterday and today?

Today she's gone, off to be an adult far away from me. I'm glad she's gone. It means she made it and that I'm finally free of 18 yeas of responsibilities. And yet I wonder if she could take good care of herself.

She left a mess. Her bathroom is an embarrassment of damp towels, rusted shaving blades, hair in the sink, and nearly empty tubes of toothpaste. I bring a box of big black garbage bags upstairs. Eye shadow, face cream, nail polish-all go into the trash. I dump drawers sweep shelves, clear and clean the sink. When I am finished, it is as neat and impersonal as a hotel bathroom.

In her bedroom I find mismatched socks under her bed and purple pants on the closet floor. Desk drawers are filled with school papers, fild by year and subject. I catch myself reading through poems and essays, admiring high scores on tests and reading her name, printed or typed neatly in the upper right-hand corner of each paper. I pack the desk contents into a box. Six months, I think. I will give her six months to collect her belongings, and then I will throw them all away. That is fair. Grown-ups pay for storage.

I have to pause at the books. Comic books, teen fiction, romantic novels, historical novels and textbooks. A lifetime of reading, each book beloved. I want to be practical, to stuff them in paper sacks for the ysed bookstore. But I love books as much as she does, so I stack them onto a single bookshelf to deal with later.

I go for her clothes. Dresses, sweaters, and shoes she hasn't worn since seventh grade are placed into garbage bags. I am a plague of locusts emptying the closet. Two piles grow to clumsy heights:one for charity, the other trash.

There are more shoes, stuffed animals, large and small poster, hair bands, and pink hair curlers .The job grows larger the longer I am at it. How can one girl collect so much in only 18 years?

I stuff the garbage bags until the plastic strains. I haul them down the stairs, two bags at a time. Donations to charity go into the trunk of my car; trash goes to the curb. I'm earning myself sweat and sore shoulders.

She left the bedroom a ridiculous mess, the comforter on the floor, the sheets tossed aside. I strip off the comforter, blanket, sheets, and pillows. Once she starts feeding coins into laundry machines, she'll appreciate the years of clean clothes I've provided for free.