As soon as school let out, Violet and I hightailed to Amsterdam for the summer to reunite with our clan. We have no Dutch ancestry (although my niece and nephew could easily pass for such) and our Belgian side is Walloon and therefore averse to its northern neighbors. However, my brother and his family have settled here and we missed them terribly and love this city after several visits over the past few years. To complete the alluring package, my parents are also in residence in Amsterdam for a month, putatively a fiftieth anniversary present from their children, but really a gift to the rest of us. We have already had such a glorious time together and it has only been a few days. To be able to hop on an e-bike and be at my brother’s place in minutes instead of several plane rides and many hours is a blessing at a level above which I can count.
Born a mountain kid, Violet nonetheless thrives in these urban environments, riding her Swapfiets with skill and aplomb in the frenzied streets, dodging curmudgeons, delivery drivers, trams, and clueless pedestrians with aplomb. Her teenage self is beginning to rise to the surface, but she exhibits none of the awkwardness that typically characterizes this intermediate stop on the journey to young adulthood. Shy by nature, a far cry from her parents’ innate boisterous predilections, her calmness manifests in a quiet confidence of which I am both envious and proud. Despite her imminent entry into adolescence, we can still share tender, child-like moments – cuddling in bed as we awake with no alarm, laughing over ramen so that the broth shoots out of our noses, giggling at the sheer deliciousness of a stroopwafel.
As all parents know or come to know, these times are fleeting and I am glad to be highly cognizant of that fact so that I can make sure to internalize all of these blissful moments. Watching the grace with which Violet is walking and biking and climbing through this world, I am dumbstruck at my good fortune to be by the side of such an amazing kid. My paternal instincts tingle with the feeling that this is all so very right, that taking her out of her natural environment, plucking her from friends, temporarily removing her from physical contact with her mother (infinite appreciation to my co-parent for this opportunity) is, on balance, a boon to her in the larger arc of her life.
All of this theoretically rightful positivity aside, I am also sometimes immobilized by petrified and at the idea that I am getting it all so very wrong, that these sojourns will be the basis for long-term resentment, that I am a fool or worse for believing that I, a flawed human and father, have a clue what I am doing. When Violet gets homesick, an obviously natural emotion, a pit forms deep in my stomach that I am scarring her for life, that she will be some miserable, itinerant, addled loner that disappears from my life forever, completely scarred by the well-meaning but completely misguided machinations of my childrearing.
This distress is not solely limited to my summer plans for Violet. It can creep into every decision, minor or major. I wonder whether she is using the right toothpaste, I fret over whether her private school is the right place for her, I ponder if I buy her too many shoes and it will turn her into a materialistic maniac, I question repeatedly whether raising her in a fantasy world is genius or idiocy. Parenting, like the rest of life, seems to be based on stumbling forward with a purposefully blind conviction that everything will be alright, that if you question too much, you will be frozen in a stasis that is clearly unworkable.
To parent is to engage in a decades-long exam interspersed with harrowing pop quizzes and tedious and/or exhausting long-form inquisitions, the grade for which is not presented until your child turns thirty or forty, when the efforts and mistakes that you have made result in the adult that they have become. Each day, each choice, each grievous error culminates in what is hopefully a happy and relatively functioning human carrying only a modicum of trauma. Such resultant offspring will be mercilessly judged by partners, coworkers, friends, peers, and strangers. It is the longest doctoral dissertation in existence, a sublime mixture of elation and despondence.
Your reward, whether you passed the test and if you are so fortunate, is the chance to watch your progeny raise their own child(ren) and support them as they continue the cycle, doubts and glories and all.