I can sympathize but certainly not even begin to imagine what it must be like to be a mother and try your absolute hardest�or what you hope is your absolute hardest, although I�m sure that I would have my doubts�to raise decent and happy kids, and worry constantly if they�re going to screw up their lives irrevocably, and know that even if you do everything in your power to help them not screw up their lives, there is still the very real and omnipresent possibility that they will, and at any point, not just when they�re young and living at home but even and especially during the so-called adult years after they�ve graduated from college (one would hope) and found a job (one would hope) and maybe even gotten married and had kids�even and especially then they possess a constant nagging and relentless and potent and sinister potentiality for screwing up their lives irrevocably. And with or without them ever realizing it, you, the mother, would know it, and know forever after that you did everything you could to keep them safe and happy and on the right path and they still went and screwed up anyway, despite your best efforts to help them not to�or here�s an even worse thought, one that would definitely plague me, were I the mother/father: perhaps because somewhere during those crucial formative years, when your word and deed was gospel for your child and everything you did or said somehow informed and influenced and shaped your child and his behavior and personality somehow, down to the tiniest and most seemingly insignificant minutae of his person, somewhere during those crucial years when nothing but your encouragement and sustenance and knowledge and protection could allow that kid to survive a single day�perhaps during that crucial period you slipped, and what if that tiny bump in the road, that smallest chink in the armor, that slightest error in parental navigation, was all it took to trigger a chain reaction continuing through the rest of the child�s so-called formative years, until it came to fruition in the aforementioned irrecovable screw-up, so neurotic would be my (as the mother) propensity toward causal explanation and self-scrutiny and second-guessing and horribly involved chaos-theory pathologies for and around my prodigal child�s fall from grace.

Like, today I realized that nearly everything my parents did for the first decade of my life was intended to bring me happiness. When I look at it that way I am absolutely galled. There�s really no way I can fully understand or digest such acts of generosity. And I have no idea how to even begin repaying the debt. But that�s the thing: I don�t think it�s a debt. There is no ledger in parenthood. At least, there shouldn�t be. And there certainly wasn�t in my childhood. The only thing my parents asked of us, basically, was that we not run away from home. We didn�t even have to do chores, not really. We had a sweet deal. And of course we never once appreciated or realized the length to which our parents were bending over backwards for us, for just another day of our happiness�which wasn�t always the easiest thing to attain, when we were being bratty. I�m sure if we had appreciated it, the comprehension of such a bestowal would crush our heads, like the obliteration, the implosion that would theoretically result from seeing God with one�s own eyes. We couldn�t get it through our little heads. And kids aren�t really supposed to. What a weird system. Even now, with the credit card, the occasional bailing out of debt, the health and car insurance, I still have trouble fathoming the generosity. It�s not a matter of having the money. Plenty of parents have the money�have much more money than my parents do�and refuse to help their kids out. I�m not saying that�s wrong�I�m sure their kids have learned a great deal of fiscal repsonsibilty, albeit the hard way�but I�m glad it�s not the case for me. It�s not about the money: as practical-minded as my mother is, the money does not matter to her. She is not enumerating her gifts and my debts. That�s just not the way it works. Perhaps it�s true Catholic charity. Perhaps she knows (she must), as I have begun to realize, that among friends there are no ledgers of debt and credit, of favors and loans. When you die, you want people to remember you as a generous person. Just try to tell me otherwise.

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