Replays
I?m in the midst of re-working my Baja story of Bahia de Los Angeles and it pulls me back to the images, repetitive for some, that I posted a while
back and on another page. I?m whiling away the months, weeks, days, hours until we can get back to a serious undertaking in settling into Baja as a
second home.
And I drift. I know it as a personal necessity.
We watched a movie tonight. It was just Mary Ann and me and the movie was Matchstick Men with Nick Cage. The boys and their friends had gone out to
see something new and glitzier. They, young folks in general, prefer the glamour of the theatre. I opt for our couch as I am not embarrassed there
when I cry at the many scenes I find touching.
But the movie we rented I hadn?t heard much about actually addressed many things we?ve lived through in my family.
I?ve always been the Alpha Male amongst the four of us. It?s not a slot I selected I just always figured, as our tiny family of four emerged on
Earth, it was where I had best fit, was most needed. Someone has to look really stupid and pound their hairy chest when bad guys are proximate.
But as we watched this movie ? a total scam in all directions ? it occurred to me that somehow in the back of my mind I had imparted my mild wisdoms
to my children, Michael and Kevin, and that this process of impartation of world truths was a unidirectional deal, that I had mysteriously and by
demonstration, given my all to their understanding of how our social world turns.
But the movie brought me back to Earth. Not that I was feeling like some kind of hero or something. Actually I was just feeling like a parent, a
father, who does the best he can, has weak points (many in my case) and loves and continues no matter what the struggle takes to hold it all together
with the support of each other.
And it was just then, at some minor turning moment in the movie, when I realized that it is nothing to do with leadership. It?s a lot to do with
family. Equality.
I had to stop and ask myself had I taught our sons more than I had learned from them?
I?ll spare us all the details of the interactions between parents and children during the process of maturation. We already know them.
But what I discovered ? remembered might be a better word ? tonight was that maturation is a bi-directional event. The lives of our children are
guided as we help them to crawl, to walk, to speak, to dress, to be polite, to receive, to give, to reward, and so on. You get the idea.
The part I recognized from the movie tonight was that all the while we are doing these things to teach our children, we are receiving feedback from
them. Some of this is challenging and causes us to consider and justify our position, some is just silly but we are required to make sense of it, and
some is just the misunderstanding of youth.
But my point is that ?adults? going through the process of ?raising? youngsters have just as much to ?learn? as they can ?teach.?
So now I?ve had my quota of bebidas, it?s late at night and the fire is fading and I?m thinking of my pals in various places scattered along our
favorite peninsula and found this silly diddle to help me be with you.
At times, in Baja, as our children have matured, we?ve been cornered into situations where they?re on their own. Sometimes there is no way to act as
a parent, a protector on a remote beach where you are stuck and your kid?s four miles distant and also in trouble. But it somehow works out and we
learn across the generations and the cultures and find a way to carry the process forward.
Working together we can most likely find a way.
And with respect to my children, I suspect ? although I?d never admit it to them ? that I?m kept more in line by them then they ever were by me!
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