Building Strong Children

I love those little revalations that come with spending time with family.  I'm just back from a week's holiday in Canada - my mother, her dog, and my niece joined us.  My mom reminded me of a number of things that happened when I was a child.  And one little comment sent me spinning.  She suggested I had to feel a bit sorry for my father, because after his father died, he was the one who had to deal with his mother's anxieties and quirks.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I have my own little anxieties and quirks.  But I was struck by the fact that my father had had to deal with his mother in that way, then I had to deal with his anxieites.  And when he was out of my life, I sought someone who had an even more complicated set of anxieties.  And I tried to fix them, because I couldn't fix my father - any more than he could fix his mother.  And somehow, any more than he could prevent himself from passing some from of those anxieties on to me.