Graduate School

My Dad has been visiting us this weekend to look at a potential independent living situation near here. (I was calling his relocating ‘going to college’ a few posts ago but that seemed a bit twee and I’m over that). He seems pretty serious about the potential move but not yet dealing with the logistics of it all.

He brought with him a large folio of old letters and documents for me with my name on it. Apparently he’s been sorting through his stuff for some time now, since my Mom died. I had no idea that Dad saved virtually every card and letter I sent him, throughout childhood and adolescence and onward, as well as report cards, the invitation to my Bat Mitzvah (a hideous chartreuse color that I picked out myself) and many other mementos from me or about me. He said he gave a similar file to my brother.

I really had no idea my father took such an interest in me. I mean, that sounds absurd, he’s a loving concerned Dad of course, but I think I perceived my parents as people who got married very young (24 and 26,) in keeping with the times, and were concentrating on their own development, both professional and personal. My Dad went to graduate school in Urban Planning when I was a kid and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation and became an expert in that area, and my mom, who had been a reading teacher, went to Social Work school. They were busy people.

But when I think about it, Max wrote his doctoral dissertation in Literature when Sarah was a baby and toddler and received his Ph.D. He worked a lot at night when she and I were sleeping, and on the weekends too. I would take her out so there would be less disturbance. I remember one Easter Sunday when she was about 14 months old he was in his study writing, and I was driving around with her trying to find someplace open to amuse her and keep her out of the house. I think we ended up at Target.

Max got his doctorate from Rutgers in 2008 when Sarah was 2, and I don’t think she was deprived in any way by his attending to this project. Probably the relief and satisfaction of the accomplishment helped him focus more on us. She certainly was a happy baby.

After I became a parent, I think I began to forgive my parents for a lot of past “mistakes” and a lot of hurts I carried from childhood and adolescence. I began to realize that most of parenting was shoot-from-the-hip, make your best guess and go for it, and not some calculated scenario that had been thought out in advance and executed to the parents’ lasting satisfaction and my psychological detriment. My parents were usually trying to do their best, and when they screwed up, they were often exhausted, overwhelmed, or just driving around trying to find an open Target, like me.