Fathers, Dad, Donors....
My dad is a wonderful father and I am in complete awe of him. On top of being full of love, even though sometimes misguided, he is smart, hard working, funny, charming, and a sucessful expert in his field, with patents and medals and all that.
Question from dad at father's day dinner: "you guys know you're late in having kids right?"
Yes, we are. I think we're all aware we're running late in life on many levels. With an office full of young blond twenty somethings with big rocks on their fingers, how could I not know? My dad was married by our age - all we have is a string of failed relationships. My dad had his career picked out - we've all picked the wrong major. My parents had kids at my age - I have a dog and my brothers have computers and ipods. My dad worked hard and escaped a commie society and was on his way to patents and medals and all that - I "met expectations" this year.
All these things make me wonder if my dad ever sits back and says, geeze, what did I do wrong? I feel bad for him. Raising really motivated children who were passionate about being great is the only thing that I know of, that he may have failed at. So now he thinks we're not motivated because we don't have kids, so we don't have something pushing us to be superstars.
I don't feel motivated, and I don't think that having kids and crossing my fingers that they'll light a flame is a great strategy and - I hope that none of us kids decide to go for it.
I think though that this weekend with my family has marks the end of a bitchy 2 week funk that I've been in since the bad weekend Gus and I had, and the Sopranos episdoe, and Bish going "missing". Maybe now I can get back to normal and put the shot glass down.
posted by chinchilla @ 12:45 PM
4 Comments:
I have similar thoughts on the my vs my parents' levels of achievement. When my dad was my age, I was four years old and he was building computers for the commies, and here I am with an exploding fridge, leaking air conditioner and not even a gf to show for it. I don't know what it is. Maybe our world isn't as black and white, deterministic and winnable as theirs was.
I read somewhere that, because the parents of our class/generation tend to be educated, successful and liberal, we can't really outdo them so the only thing we can do to rebel is to not try. I don't know if I completely buy that, but I think bits and pieces of it have cropped up in my life.
Hmmm....I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels that way. And interesting argument - except I don't think that what I am doing can be called an "effort" of any sort to rebel, but a lack thereof. Of cousre I guess these things are supposed to be subconcious.
And I know there's go getters out there, (I think) I just don't seem to have them in my social circle or something. I guess we'll see how things turn out.
D, you're forgetting that your Dad came from a completely different generation, one where you get married, the man worked all day, and the woman stayed home taking care of the kids, cleaning and cooking. That is not our generation.
Maybe our generation is a reaction to the nuclear family, because women are more empowered to make a career for themselves, and less likely to latch onto a man and marry him only to divorce him down the road.
Would you feel better about yourself if you had a husband and kids and you stayed at home all day? I don't think you had that in mind for yourself during your early twenties, otherwise that's where you would be right now. It's all about what you want to do with your life, and if our generation is a little more indecisive, at least we can choose. So what if we have our kids in our thirties instead of our twenties?
I think you kind of focused on just one part of the entry - I am not saying or thinking that kids and marriage are the right path for me, but about a lack of motivation in general - something that it would seem, should have been somehow passed on in the attitudes and values I was brought up in.
And I don't even know if I want kids in my 30's anyway.....always kinda flip floppin on that one.
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