Parenting, the Ultimate Education

I rarely felt secure or safe with my anything but square parents. But I learned a lot.

I learned that everybody loves you when you've got dope, and when you've got none, you know who your friends are.

I learned the smell of patchouli and hair gone too long unwashed.

I learned that spiritual groups will deceive you while smiling and spouting love and peace.

I learned that even when you find a cause worth fighting for, your efforts may be futile and you end up wondering if your energy had been better spent elsewhere.

I learned that people have to work to stay connected, else their separate psyches drive them apart.

I learned that men and women practice betrayal in many forms, and even those who claim to love you best may participate.

I learned that when you hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to fall.

I learned that no matter how dire your straits, recovery is always possible.

I learned to amuse myself with books, sticks, and imagination, and that television is a mass mindnumbing leach.

I learned to skate on a frozen pond and to swim in a warm rainfilled clay pit.

I learned the ways of breadmaking when my mother gave me a lump of dough to knead, then baked my little creation in the big oven alongside the commercial loaves.

I learned the strata of the earth's top layers when my father dug a four-foot pit for no other reason than to show me.

I learned the feel of corn pollen on the back of my neck, the song of frogs and birds and crickets, the smell of soybeans growing in their ribbed fields, and the flavor of peas fresh off the vine.

I learned that grownups, too, love to play, to laugh, to swim naked, stripping to dive into bottomless strip pits.

I learned that having nothing doesn't seem like nothing when you've nothing to compare it to.

I learned that infidelity and divorce are not the end of anyone's world, but that moving far away sometimes can be.

I learned that you can learn new things after the age of fourty, and these may be the most important ones of all.

I learned that my parents are creative, innovative people with strong wills and big dreams, and the courage to gamble everything to achieve them.

I learned that even if they didn't match my idea of ideal parents, the world could use more humans like them, and I've been really very lucky indeed.