My Kids are Clingy
I didn’t set out to make clingy kids that seek out hugs, cuddles, snuggles, and the like. It wasn’t intentional, and they may even become personal space invaders in the future.
It wasn’t my intention to turn them into creatures that attach themselves to me any time I’m sitting on something squishy.
I think I have to take responsibility for it, though.
Their future spouses may curse my name as they barricade themselves in the bathroom to escape their affection.
“You’ve reached your cuddle quota for the day!”
they may shout through the door.
I can even hear their friends:
“Dude. We don’t have to hug at every goodbye.”
I don’t know what the consequences may be, but I highly doubt they will be overly negative. It may be that the police officer who picks them up drunk catches an:
“I love you, man!”
But it might ease the booking process.
No, I don’t see many looming potentials for adverse consequences.
It happened as a side effect.
When I held my daughter for the first time, I was struck by the fact that I was now a real parent. I had been trying my best to stand in for my oldest son, but I wasn’t there for his first years, and it felt disjointed.
Looking down on that reddish, wrinkled face made all the linkages click into place and leave me feeling full of awe at the idea that I was a father.
It was downright terrifying.
The second moment that struck me into being a father was the adoption hearing where my oldest became my legal son a few months later. I cried at that time. I was getting the chance to be a father to a human I knew.
That night, I cried for a different reason.
I didn’t know what to do with this newly bestowed title. I found myself overcome with the responsibility I felt for these two young humans.
It wasn’t fair to them. The selection process for father had fallen on one not ready or able. I wanted to be. I desperately wanted to be.
All parts of me seemed broken, though. My battle with PTSD, Bipolar I Disorder, and anxiety consistently left me emotionally bankrupt. The mind that filled my head was battered and bruised.
I was all used up.
My stamina was stripped, and my go had been reduced to “oh…”
That doesn’t mean I wanted to run away, or that I even tried to. Instead, I tried to decide how I could make it work. I had to have something that I could give them to make up for my short fallings.
I knew that I would and already did, fall short in the play department. Daddy could lay on the floor, but his imagination for playtime was severely lacking.
Me chasing after them wasn’t happening much either. That required a bit more drive than the sporadically depressed could muster up with much frequency.
Even reading could feel like a chore, especially with the oldest bouncing about and unable to sit and focus on the story. It shouldn’t have been laborious, but it was.
There were other times that only tears filled my time. There was no Daddy at all in those moments. They were greeted only with a blubbering mess that likely needed a shower or even a hose.
Mania wasn’t much better.
When I was manic, I had no time for the trivial pursuits of my dear children. They didn’t quite move fast enough for me.
They jibbered and chattered but my mind was somewhere far away, imagining some grand plan that was less important than even a single jibber much less any chatter.
I was so afraid of the father I’d be.
I could see no light at the end of any of those tunnels. I would be raising the left out, the left behind, and the chronically ignored. I couldn’t let that happen.
I had just one thing.
I had love. It wasn’t anything special, but it was all I had.
It wouldn’t make a dinosaur roar. It wouldn’t build a race track and crash little cars across the living room floor. It wouldn’t shovel up dirt for the army man’s base.
Love couldn’t chase them down the hallway, and slide socked feet across the hardwood. It wouldn’t race them to the car or push them in the park’s swings.
There was no way for love to vocalize printed word, or turn the pages on a favorite book. It couldn’t explain the pictures or point out the new words.
Love may not turn back the tears. Love is a powerful dam, but waves of pain can crest the top.
Love does slow down, though.
It does slow down for a kind word. A quick hug might be fast enough, and the weight of a cuddle could hold me down.
If my children could have nothing else from me, I decided they could have a father that showered them with love.
So I gave them all the love I could muster.
I was bankrupt in all things except that.
I swept them up in hugs. Some of them were gentle and caring, but others were a squeezing contest. They always seemed to win.
I wrapped them up close to me and watched their shows with them. I could let my mind drift to things I needed to think while being safely by their side.
I made “I love you” into a common phrase.
It often came sporadically, at a chance meeting in the hall. It always accompanied “goodbye,” and of course it came with “goodnight.”
It was something said in happy times with smiling faces, but also in the times of trouble as a reassurance that all is not lost.
The rules may have been broken, but love remains.
As time passed, my children grew into this little thing called love.
They may be clingy, but I find it amazing.
Few couch moments go by without a child jumping up for at least a quick snuggle. They sit against me as they play their electronics and tells me all about it as they do.
They jump for hugs, still seeking the squeeze championship. I catch my son with the “I love you” when he’s mad at me, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy his brief frustration at the admission.
It’s reasonably certain, I’ve created the atmosphere of love that I wished for.
I don’t know if it made up for all of the things that I could not do. I still think back with the wish that I could do it over with the mind I have now.
Those things I once struggled with come easy now. My kids never really missed a beat when I started joining in. It was as if they had been saving my place.
Instead of looking back, I will choose to look forward.
We shall live our life of love, and bring with it all of the things that we can do in between.
If you can only give one thing, make it love.
It’s free, and it lasts a lifetime.
