Old Man

When these lyrics started running through my head this morning, I thought it was because the last couple of days have been filled with conversations about being a parent and the choices it requires one to make that would have otherwise been a lot less complex. I had to make a decision this week to go on a trip for work (to a desirable locale where I could've visited friends for free and learned some things that would be useful for my job) or stay home to see my son act in a skit. I solicited advice from a number of people, including my ex-husband and lots of other people with kids of their own. My boss gave me the choice, and when I told him I was going to let the Mom card trump this time around, he was supportive.

But when I found this video of young Neil singing this song in the year I was born, I felt the profundity of this musical selection on a much deeper level. I love Neil Young, but I know him mostly as the "old man" he is now -- not this young man, not yet a father himself (though in the following year he'd have the first of three kids), singing about his own father, who'd had many affairs and eventually left his mother. Reading these lyrics, I hear a young man struggling with a difficult relationship with his father:

Lullabies, look in your eyes,

Run around the same old town.

Doesn't mean that much to me

To mean that much to you.

But I also hear a young man who's begun to see the humanity of his own flawed father:

Old man take a look at my life

I'm a lot like you

I need someone to love me

the whole day through

Ah, one look in my eyes

and you can tell that's true.

And recognize that now that he's grown up, what his father didn't (and maybe couldn't) give him could come from somewhere else. He might even have begun to realize that he could provide the love he didn't get from his Dad to his own children and thus join a cycle of healing that has been going on for centuries. I carried a lot of fear into parenthood that my children might have to endure what I did as a child. At the time, I couldn't recognize that living with that fear was keeping me from giving them the quality of presence that they deserved.

Nowadays, I feel freed by the understanding that it isn't my job to be a perfect parent (we're all flawed -- it's part and parcel of being human), nor is it my job to shelter my children from pain. It's just my job to be there with them while they learn to deal with it and find as much joy in the journey as I can. And there's so much to savor about being a parent: as my daughter crawled in bed next to me to listen to this great song, saying "I like Neil Young," I pulled her in close and said I did too...