BALANCING ACT

It’s wonderful to see beautiful children and watch them growing up. They reflect so much the passage of time, but also, show us the future and that it is good and beautiful because they are good and beautiful.

A few years ago a ‘village’ was raising a child. Maybe. However, the heads of that village, at least for that child are their parents. Even today when kids head out for daycare and pre-school younger and younger, it is still the parents who make the difference on what that child will be and become.

I do not fear that children will not grow up the way we did, with the values of our parents, forbears and culture known, remembered and respected, because I know our children are being raised by the children of our parents. I can see them in my family and in the children they are raising.

I therefore know that ultimately they will have nothing to fear from the mad society will live in and that like me, they will rise to the challenge when their upbringing and beliefs are threatened or questioned by their peers.

I remember the shock I felt when I first had freedom from the strictures of my very sheltered upbringing. However, the shock of the world so different from what we were taught and raised to believe, wears off and the foundation beneath is far more solid than we could imagine.

In my own family, my youngest sibling called me one day, many years ago when she was a young woman, and told me that our mother was dismayed (to put it mildly) by this youngest child and the views she was hearing. As soon as I heard what had been said, I realized that our poor mother must have felt a nightmare déjà vu coming at her.

The words of her youngest child were literally the same as she’d heard from me, decades before. Frankly, she must have felt she was losing her mind or shortly would because the younger generations differences from her own beliefs were rearing their ugly heads again.

Here we are, now 20 years since she died and today (and again next week) still celebrating our culture, saying the prayers we were taught and looking with pride at the next generation.

I know it’s not magic. It isn’t an accident that these young children are so good and lovely. I see the balancing act that their parents perform day after day and year after year. 

I see the sacrifices my family has to make for their children, just as our parents made for us. I see all of this and I am proud; of my parents, my heritage, my siblings and their children.

I celebrate Easter with a happy heart, knowing that however much of our time I live in the present; at heart I still draw upon my foundation every day of my life. 

I join my family, today and every day, on the firm ground that is my inheiritance and the lifelong legacy my parents bequeathed to us when they raised us within the village that we grew up in.