A chapter from “An Artist’s Story,” the life story Lee wrote in his eighties. In his words, as he wrote them.
Lois and I were married in June of 1940 and we didn’t have any preconceived plans, except we wanted a home of our own. We were much like any other young family starting out. Having children was just part of our future and was the same for most other young couples in the 40’s. Being parents was just something that happened. Most husbands worked at some type of job and the wives became homemakers. We looked forward to having children and we just knew and felt that there were few experiences more wonderful than having children and becoming a parent. Then we found out that being a parent and raising children was the most difficult part of our lives, we were challenged all of the time as our children began to grow. Wow!! We asked a lot of questions and most everyone, including our own parents and grand parents said that being a parent was not easy.
On the other hand they would say that it was one of the most rewarding experiences of their lives. Wow!! What to believe?
When Lois and I were starting to raise our children we sort of kept a weather eye on how we were raised. There seemed to be a lot of miss information on how to raise a child, and we were bombarded from all ideas with the “Does and the Do Nots” of raising children, especially in the area of discipline.
I believe that Lois and I developed a “right spirit” when it came to our children. One of the toughest parts of raising children is the fact that our children are so close to our hearts. Nothing is as important as our children. Yes we had sleepless nights and hours of worry when they were sick. For the most part we worked hard to see that our children were busy and happy. We always praise the Lord for their health and well-being.
I must add here that we did have parental concern for our children. This just goes along with the territory of loving enough to care about our children. This care can become unhealthy though when you have a difficult child and when the worry then can become consuming, at that point its easy to lose ones perspective.
Lois and I always felt good about each one of you. You were healthy and smart and we thank the Lord for his blessing on each one of you.
However I don’t think that we idolized any of you. We always had the understanding that as important as each one of you were, you were not all important. We tried not to let you become the main focus of our lives. We did not have any unrealistic expectations of this thing called Parenting.
As you know we made a lot of mistakes and I am sure that some of our human nature we often passed on to you. I am pleased about that too. Ha! Ha!
We are glad that some of the long difficult times were not forever. When they did happen we quickly learned the value of waiting on GOD. We just had to learn to let his strength and love come through for us and it always did.
There is a quote in the Bible found in Proverbs written by Solomon many years ago, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it“.
The hard part was that we had to keep up the training no matter how tired we were, even through each stage of your growth. Each one of you kids was different in your development and your needs and some times it was hard to satisfy everyone. I am sorry about that. Lois and I tried to make room so that each one of you could make your own wise choices and yes-even mistakes.
We took Solomon’s words as a promise. Anyway, we hope that each of you will stick with our training, (good or bad) for the rest of your lives. We pray that our memories will stick to you until the day that you die, “Halleluiah“.
I think that most of the time now that we are in our 80’s, we have what we call peace of mind. Yes we often wonder about the future but as far as you kids are concerned our parenting was worth the effort.
One of the things that we learned to do with the “string of control” as I call it in trying to be a good parent was not to hang on too tight with the string. It’s like flying a kite. Sometimes you have to let the string out so that each one can soar, at times it was necessary to hold the string a little tighter until each of you could learn to fly on your own. As you kids got older we began to understand that learning was occurring whether we realized it or not. One of our sayings that we some times used was, “Because I said so that’s why!” We were just throwing around our parental authority. It just showed that we had a lot to learn about raising children. We soon found out that there was a lot of things that we needed GODS help with. It was hard some times to stop yelling at you and threatening and repeating ourselves.
We raised you kids much like our parents raised us. We did the best we could to show you what was expected and to let you know what would happen if you obeyed. Oh yes I often jumped in too fast when I wanted to tell you what would happen if you did not. At any rate we learned to let you make your choice. There were consequences when you ended up being grounded or lost TV privileges.
Teaching you guys to choose which path to take was often hard and I sometimes wanted to jump in there and make you behave. As time went on I began to realize that I couldn’t force this on to you any more than I could force a horse to drink water.
Speaking of horses reminds me that parenting is a lot like farming. Parenting is plowing and digging and raking and planting. Then it’s weeding and cultivating and then we have to wait on GOD for the harvest time. A good farmer knows that he doesn’t raise chickens like turkeys, nor corn like alfalfa and like parenting I don’t think that some of the quick formulas used today is the best way for raising children.
Many children for instance today have so many worldly things that they create so many problems that the parents have just given up the job of parenting. I remember back to our high school days in the late 30’s at Central High in Flint. The student parking lot was a very small parking area on Kearsley Street with perhaps 15-25 cars belonging to a few students but mostly owned by the parents and teachers.
Later on when you kids were attending high school at Bentley, the high school parking lot was increased in size each semester to accommodate the influx of vehicles owned by the students and very few students walked to and from school.
Today the high school here in Davison has mostly as many cars as students and many of them are new models. I believe that the things kids have today requires too much quick growth. Many just don’t have a chance to grow up and too many parents are trying to speed up the harvest at any cost.
As we got older we began to realize that our children are like everything else that we possess and in reality they are not our own. You were placed in our care just temporarily by our Lord to be raised for him. I must state right here that much of the peace of mind we have is because we continue to pray for each one of you. Each week we try to swim at least two days for our own good. Mom usually does her 40 lengths and I try to do mine and during the last 5 laps of our swim we pray for each member of the family no matter how distant they are from us. Prayer is important.
A man by the name of Hodding Carter from Grand Rapids Michigan wrote the following he said that, “There are only two lasting gifts that we can give to our children, one of these is roots; the other, wings“.
We learned that it was important that we teach you early in life that some day you would all be on your own. When you were young and we were new at this parenting business we tried to hold you close, but not too close. We knew that some day you would all be flying on your own. You are all doing a great job of flying now and I hope that what you glean from my writing this story is that you know something of the depth of your roots.
Oh by the way my prayer for you while I am swimming goes something like this, “Do whatever it takes to bring my children to you and to maturity of faith and love. Yes Lord, do whatever it takes. Thank you“.
