Last night I saw King Lear at the Globe, Shakespeare's theater on the bank of the Thames. I've seen the play before, but now that I'm a parent I was especially struck by the idea of love and loyalty between parent and child gone terribly wrong.
King Lear's daughter Cordelia doesn't shower adoration--empty flattery, as she sees it--upon her royal father, and he banishes her from his kingdom forever. In the B story, a greedy, disgruntled son born out of wedlock destroys the relationship between his father, the Earl of Gloucester, and his favorite, "legitimate" son by causing Gloucester to doubt the wifely born son's loyalty.
It all seemed so true, sitting there on my rented cushion. As parents, we want our children to declare their love hugely, to repay us for all we've done for them with an unblemished appraisal of our doings. As children, we want our parents to love us unconditionally, to see through to the true depths of our love no matter what we do. And then there are the machinations of others which can so easily come between parent and child, if we allow them to do so.
Earlier in the day I had called home only to find my son completely absorbed in a bag of white balloons. His piggy was playing with them, they were on his moon rocket, they were filled with water and going splat on the asphalt of the driveway. He sounded deliriously happy, and...deliriously independent. My heart soared--my happy child! My heart broke--my child so perfectly fine without me!
After a few almost incomprehensible reports about the balloons, he told me he had to go back to playing. My goodness, I thought. Where is my adoration! Where are my son's ecstatic expressions of love and missing. But this is the lesson, isn't it? To make our children perform for us, to hold on when we should let go with love, is to teach them that following their own path is a betrayal. This cripples the children we so want to thrive.
I found myself thinking too of other people coming between parent and child, too. My search for a pre-school is, on the surface, about finding a place where my son will be happy, learn cool stuff, and try to stay lice-free. Beneath the surface it's about making sure other people don't undermine my bond with my son with their ideas.
Clearly I'm under the influence of the Bard, but these old tales, told in the open air in the seat of western civilization have an impact. Beyond the modern critique, you see the human struggle to keep the archetypal parent/child relationship in proper alignment.
Have you ever doubted your child's love? Has anyone ever come between you and your parents?
