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Unconditional love – what the kids need, what parents struggle to give
Ambivalence – the push-pull of love and hate, of self and other – is an inevitable part of all meaningful human relationships, including parenthood.
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Sometimes it can feel impossible to reconcile unconditional love with the tawdry machinations of day-to-day parenting.
PHOTO: PIXABAY
Ruth Whippman
This year, my two oldest sons asked me to sign them up for piano lessons. For reasons that a therapist might be better placed to untangle, I decided it would also be a good time for me to take up the piano again, after 30 years.
“Man hands on misery to man,” Philip Larkin wrote in his chirpy-desolate poem This Be The Verse. In our house, this transfer now happens with predictable efficiency on Monday afternoons between after-school pickup and dinner.
