parenting

June 22, 2025

How I Came to Love My Brothers

I am an older brother who was clueless about fulfilling my role when my siblings and I were kids. Big brothers are expected to show the way for the younger ones, as if we received training.

I sure hadn’t.

Little Gerry Stein arrived on Earth four and five years ahead of Ed and Jack, respectively. The mature guidance I lacked left me like a blind man without the power of speech, leading deaf men who could see.

No one was pleased with this, and my brothers’ dilemma was further fueled by their birth one year apart, which heightened their sibling rivalry.

Since my dad worked multiple jobs, our mother took over the family’s traffic cop position. Life was sometimes like a demolition derby with lots of collisions.

Our mother’s mother, Esther Fabian, raised her four children during the Great Depression, the 1930s. The family lived in a troubled time. 

My sweet grandfather was out of work and alcoholic. His strong-willed wife was the couple’s powerhouse. 

She used her status to tell each child to be more like her other children. This was done one at a time, so all believed they were failing the life she gave them, unlike their siblings.

Call the home a cauldron filled with poverty, starvation, and pressure, stirred with some added bile and desperation.

Esther’s kind of supervision made the kids competitive and unhappy–jealous of the others and desirous of more time with an encouraging and sober adult,

Mom’s only model of mothering was her mom, so she took the tack Esther displayed. When all one understands is how to use a hammer, everything requires hammering.

Her strategy used each of us like a weapon to downgrade the others, not likely to make us friends.

It is not as if no love existed in my home. Laughter was plentiful, too, since my parents had a riotous sense of humor. Still, my mother was broken, and some of the shards of her anger rained on us.

My brothers and I had better times when we played softball in leagues organized by Chicago and suburban park districts. The Stein Boys stuck together and played well.

Our separate lives went their way, but the possibility of conflict among the Stein boys never disappeared until both our parents died in old age.

A basic decency and feeling for fairness survived, perhaps because we’d seen enough evidence of unkindness growing up, sometimes at home, in school, and on the streets with buddies. Our folks’ commitment to justice offered an abstract, imperfect direction.

Dad had his wife on a pedestal, and Mom was a talented rationalizer, caught between undiagnosed depression and anger.

The shadow of our grievances waited to be fixed. It had no expiration date. But in our parents’ passing, no one was left to set us against each other in a match to win approval.

Eddie, who was in charge of Mom’s estate, was conscientious in carrying out our parents’ equitable wishes. There was now room for us to maneuver and change our relationships.

Not long after, our behaviorally challenged Aunt Florence, a lifelong grifter, began to decline. Ed and Jack did their best to assist her despite her outsized suspiciousness. She was a “chaos merchant,” as Joseph Epstein described people who make trouble for others without distressing themselves.

Ed finally became the target of our aunt’s paranoid delusions, and Jack supported him when she took her anger out on Eddie. My brothers’ kindnesses to their aunt had not gone unpunished. 

I chose to steer clear of Florence’s circus and didn’t reach out to her. Nor did I expect any applause by keeping a distance from her, but when she died, she left me $600,000. Compared to this woman’s animus for my brothers, my distancing made me appear acceptable.

Since I had done nothing to win this surprising inheritance from a woman who pretended to be homeless, I decided to share it equally with my siblings and two cousins Florence had shunned.

Another $7,000 went to the Zeolite Scholarship Fund, a philanthropy my high school buddies and I created.

How did we, brothers of the same blood, set things right? Decades had passed, a waste of time to heal a wound we all carried–a laceration we had inflicted and received, like a boomerang.

Eddie, Jack, and Gerry remained brothers and aging orphans. Our parents had suffered bad times, but encouraged us to do better in life than they did, though they had no clear idea of how we should proceed.

The Stein boys needed guidance from our early days. One cannot know how to give it while looking for it oneself. By now, we had figured some things out and made the lives our parents had wished us to have.

I became the big brother I had never been. I needed to take this position in the absence of our folks and, at last, to tell my brothers someone was proud of them. I said it because it was the truth.

My brothers and I benefited from checking on and rooting for each other as we did on the playing field. We needed to embrace and express our affection. We needed to remember the lives, the people, the time, and the place we had shared: the memories no one else had.

The Stein boys–no longer children–were altered by time and experience, and cared less about fading differences.. Each of us became kinder, more thoughtful human beings with less or nothing to prove.

The flourishing of our affection had always been there in disguise. Ours was a late love, a poignant thing only discovered when family was gone and friends were nearing the finish line or past it. 

A few months ago, I told my brothers to make me a promise: to remember to love their sibling if I was not around to remind them.

The Hindu proverb says, “Help your brother’s boat across, and your own will reach the shore.”

April 27, 2025

The Difficult Choices of Parenting

A child cannot know all of her parents’ thoughts and emotions when they raise her. Dark nights of the soul visit every caretaker. The young one is often spared the pain of a parent’s uncertainty.

Even when that budding flower finds herself in the same role, her experience differs. The new Mama Bear is a different person, married to a man who is not a duplicate of her father. She cares for her pride and joy at a new time in history, perhaps in another part of the world.

The heads of the family must think about what is necessary to rear this fledgling. The juvenile can be unlike her siblings in appearance, intellect, emotionality, risk, attention, generosity, competitiveness, a desire for love, and a wish to give affection. Add a thousand other qualities, and perhaps one comes close to expressing the individualized nature of the ones you bring into the world.

No textbook provides sure-fire guidance. No one can tell you when to replenish yourself and when to lift the one-time infant above your head while you are drowning.

The moms and dads also make a living, try to find time for friends, and hope to enjoy hobbies that give them a measure of joy and relief.

They try and try again.

Or maybe they don’t have time or opportunity for any of these, except for putting food on the table and a roof over all the heads in their charge.

Solo parents play the role of a duet because it is needed. Yet even with a steadfast partner, the family’s finances or the job’s travel requirements can remove the adults from the home for days or weeks.

Here, then, is a story about our guardians’ decisions and choices. Remember that I listened to endless stories of both parental self-sacrifice and mistakes of those who brought new life into the world in the first place. It is a tale of fathers and sons.

The younger fellow (whom I will call Patrick) attended a major post-high school music conservatory on the East Coast. Such schools are competitive, and few of the many gifted students become full-time musicians. Indeed, reaching a level of expertise as a brain surgeon might be easier than achieving a soloist’s career or a more modest full-time role in an instrumental or vocal ensemble.

The Dad loved classical music and occasionally traveled across the country to concerts before the birth of his firstborn. Nonetheless, he and his spouse attended every one of Pat’s elementary and high school performances. 

For the proud father, this included sacrificing paid time at work to see him shine.

During the son’s conservatory education, the marital pair visited him, attended his performances, and drove back and forth to install the young man Patrick into his dorm. They picked him up and returned him for the holidays or summertime. Many parents follow the same unremarkable routine.

The story is only of interest by returning to the patriarch’s life before marriage. Forty years earlier, in college, the father witnessed the Prokofiev Symphony #2 in a stunning live performance. Most ensembles in the United States had never played it, and he didn’t expect to have the chance again.

To his surprise, however, it would be presented in the city where his boy now attended school.

The Dad put the event on his calendar and purchased tickets for himself and his wife. They anticipated seeing Pat for an unexpected visit and were happy about the coincidence of being able to encounter the Prokofiev as well. Indeed, it was the first U.S. performances of the piece since the one that Dad had enjoyed in college.

Fate had other ideas.

Weeks after plans were solidified, the conservatory scheduled students for a solo recital. Each student prepared short pieces lasting no more than 10 or 15 minutes. Patrick would take part.

As you have guessed, the two events were scheduled across town at the same time.

The progenitor was torn. He’d waited four decades without expecting the composition to be heard anywhere but on his stereo system, not in person. He’d witnessed his son’s efforts and would have more chances to do so, but not this time if he used the ticket. 

How would the offspring feel? How could the devoted Dad put his Pat second? Would his mother’s presence be enough? She’d decided to give up the ticket beside her husband in the concert hall to support her son.

Her mate chose the Prokofiev. His son did not object, but neither of his folks was a mind reader. Though he didn’t express unhappiness, who knew for sure? Judge them all as you wish.

The parents traveled to the city early to see the same orchestra in a different repertoire the day before the two competing events.

As the male parent sat in the auditorium listening to the first concert, his thoughts drifted to the next night and the conservatory. His wife and son would be without him in 24 hours. 

What would you do?

My patient did not follow his original plan, though aware he might never reencounter the masterpiece. Instead, he needed to cheer on someone dear who made him glad to be alive.

I listened to this story long after the event happened. It might not sound like much to you. Perhaps your choice would have been easy–maybe it would have been the same. Or different.

Was one path the right one and the other wrong? 

School tuition was expensive, and the father paid it, but he recognized something more on the day he missed the Prokofiev. The man remembered he was “all in” to give life to a boy’s dream so he would never wonder, “What if?”

His offspring received his chance, and the Dad gave up a different kind of dream: waiting for half a lifetime for a second chance, for the excitement and thrill of it. There were no regrets on either side.

The decision wasn’t a matter of life or death, but it is one of many we make, whether we produce kids or not. That said, the existence of our children alters our reasoning and priorities. Patrick’s career wouldn’t have been derailed if Dad were absent, but most other parents from out of town weren’t present.

Such is life, such are relationships, and such are the choices we must make, the ones that impact others even when those others are not our children.

Life presents possibilities beyond imagination. With children, we add more to the array of ways we influence the fortunes of those around us, whether we know the names, nationalities, and races of the strangers we have helped, harmed, seen, or dismissed from our sense of responsibility to love our neighbor.

Life is a bit like a TV game show. You face the choice of door one, two, or three. Unlike entertainment programs, however, you cannot guarantee a mindblowing prize by walking through the ideal entrance. Instead, there is another door and then another in perpetuity.

At least in the story you just read, the father’s love drew him to his son’s music-making rather than his intended destination. Many of the most meaningful choices have a cost one would rather not pay. In the worst cases, we shy away from those decisions and the fear they stir inside, or favor our self-interest and compromise ourselves. In the best circumstances, one pays the cost and doesn’t look back.

Pat’s Dad didn’t want to let down anyone he loved.

=============

The top photo is a Juvenile, Slender-billed Gull Calling For Food Gull by Ryzhof Sergey, sourced from Wikimedia Commons, 2017. Next comes If I Knew the World Ended Tomorrow, I Would Plant an Apple Tree Today, Street Art by Heraku in Berlin.

Finally, the photo of A Mama Elephant and Baby in Masai Mara, Kenya, November 2024 taken by Laura Hedien and used with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

April 17, 2025

A Grateful Goodbye: The Importance of Endings

Old relationships leave a variety of marks. Dark and light, faint and bright, on the surface and below. Some fade quickly, others remain: the wistful, the love-sick, the haunting. Endings matter. They impact how you remember past passions, family, and friends.

Therapists talk about grieving, but what comes after? Is there more yet to learn?

We grieve close-up but understand at a distance, needing time to tally the score and figure out what happened. In the brightness and intensity of proximity, our emotions get in the way of reason and perspective.

The people who have reappeared as memories in my life sometimes took new forms and offered new lessons. One who lived on a pedestal far too high became more narcissistic and closer to earth with time. I understood her only after a while. But an old girlfriend is one thing, a parent something else.

Though as a little boy, I was “the cream in her coffee,” Mom and I lived at odds most of her life. Over time, I learned to master most of my animosity, fulfilled my responsibility, and visited the folks without incident. She knew I came out of duty more than admiration and said so in her 70s: “You love me, but don’t like me.” I could not deny it.

Age mellowed Mom some. The cutting edge of her double-sided compliments was duller, the clever complaints more effortful, less acid. After my 88-year-old dad died in the summer of 2000, my mom (81 herself) was desperately unhappy. She’d long since given up on friendship, not wishing to risk closeness. The wounds of her childhood remained unaddressed. Much as Jeanette Stein could be a tough person to deal with, the emotional devastation of an alcoholic father, a paranoid, smothering mother, youthful poverty, and teenage tuberculosis-these were her most faithful companions. They alone and her three sons represented the only “relationships” left with Dad gone.

In the last six-months of her too-long life (she daily prayed to my father and her mother to take her) I visited her every week. Preparation was required. I donned my armor suite, readying for the joust: criticisms aimed at me, the kids, the wife too; none of them present for the “fun” of seeing her again. Mostly, I kept quiet, conversed about the TV shows she watched, my brothers’ lives, searching for “safe” topics, and whatever else might pass the minutes with as little incident as possible.

The last time we talked wasn’t remarkable. While Mom was her usual critical self, at least she was not at her worst. The next week, Mrs. Stein didn’t answer the phone call made from the retirement facility’s reception desk. I took the elevator to her room, but no amount of knocking got a response. The facility manager opened her apartment for me. We discovered Mom sitting upright with a cooling cup of coffee tableside. She never regained consciousness.

Not an unusual ending, then, but I haven’t told you what happened two weeks before: the second to last time I talked with her. My mother suffered from lots of physical pain, even when she escaped invasion by one of her frequent headaches. Not this day. She felt “pretty good” and offered me a lightness of spirit I’d not seen in decades. We laughed. She was at ease. Her cleverness had no ill intent. The time together was an unexpected joy for me, almost a miracle: one of the most extraordinary days in my pretty interesting life. The kind of day you want to capture in a bottle and take home with you, the more poignant and precious it is, because you can’t.

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, has described us as having two “selves.” The experiencing self and the remembering self:

The experiencing self is the one that answers the question (say, during a painful event): ‘Does it hurt now?’ The remembering self is the one that answers the question: ‘How was it, on the whole?’ Memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living, and the only perspective that we can adopt as we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.

Kahneman continues, “The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living.”

Yet, as the psychologist also tells us, this is not the whole story. If you are having surgery, your memory will be influenced by the “peak-end rule.” Both the extent of pain at its peak and the level of suffering at surgery’s end affect whether you will think back to the procedure as awful or no big deal. A benign ending can transform the experience.

Endings are like boomerangs–they keep returning. Twenty-four years have passed since Mom died. It has become easier to “live” with her ghost and be more sympathetic to her tragic life. My brothers and I get along better, and the family jokes I tell do not have the bitterness of the past.

That last good day lasted just a couple of hours—not long, but it didn’t need to. Some people get nothing of value when relationships end. The things unsaid remain unsaid on one or both sides; the finish finishes, at best, in discontent, at worst, in horror. You think you will have more time, and then it’s gone. I was lucky to see my mother once again, beautiful and gay, happy and happy with me.

It was not enough for the teen I was once, but by then it was enough for the adult, surely more than I expected or imagined possible.

It will do.

——-

The top photo is of my mother as a young woman. The Suit of Armor is from the Carnegie Museum of Art, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The Daniel Kahneman quotes can be found in his wonderful book Thinking, Fast and Slow.

October 23, 2023

Making Friends With Your Siblings

Parents often say they raised all their children the same way. This assumes the impossible. Since robots do not give birth, the couple changes with time. Moreover, successive little ones land on a transforming planet, often in a retrofitted country — their corner of a changing world.

The presence of a second or third child always impacts those who came before and vice versa. The wife and husband who meet the newest addition have already been reshaped by experience. The sight of a later cellophane-wrapped infant doesn’t usually produce the over-the-moon moment of the emergence of #1.

Catching lightning in a baby bottle happens but once for most marital pairs. Sorry to say, routine invades even Mother Nature’s magic.

Parents experiment when past child-rearing strategies fail, perhaps because their newly baked schemes must be done on the fly, when half-baked plans are created. Some realize the necessity of kindness and affection, while life drains others of their capacity for love and the energy for loving.

When the children are of different genders, a further complication occurs. The varieties of physical attractiveness, temperament, and intellect also stir the melting pot.

It is helpful if mom and dad recognize their little ones don’t all come from an assembly line in a widget factory. The adults’ task is to adapt to each new face and pint-sized brain, not to demand the child adjust to the adults.

The best of folks try to become the new and improved version of the guardian and guide each one needs. For Dancer E, the parents must twirl to the right, for Wordle Champion K to the left while jumping up to meet Studious G and stretching to reach Muscle Man S.

Fairness to Kiddie #2 feels like unfairness when defined by #3. In the end, the children often sense Mom or Dad playing favorites, though the basis for this can be natural affinity to a particular offspring, not something intentional. Yet, singling out individuals can happen, for worse or better, leaving an unseeing, well-treated witness in denial over the abuse the other reports.

As kids age, the weight of real or imagined unfairness accumulates. Periods of competition and dislike test the family’s adaptive ability and the wisdom of the adults. Friendship among the sibs isn’t guaranteed. Financial preference for one generates lifetime grudges.

Illness and health, accidents, and triumphs impact the group, sometimes in unpredictable ways. It should be no surprise that one teen sometimes perceives a different family from the rest. An insightful child in a troubled home tends to become an alienated outsider if she considers the time in their shelter unsheltered.

Even a person who remains close to longtime friends tends to find no one but sisters and brothers who recollect so much of her early experience. Moreover, the memory of those who brought them all into the world is unique because they lived under the same roof 24/7.

This is still true when living together doesn’t create togetherness. In such instances, something precious is lost.

Shared memories frequently provide the motivation to allow differences to be set aside in those relationships that have turned bitter. This is most true as former members of the same household move into and past middle age, all the more if their begetters are gone.

Often, at least one grown sib must apologize to make friendship possible, while the other accepts it with sincerity and gratitude. Making amends can come into play, as well. They both realize grudges should have an expiration date.

The wise among them recognize time is short, and they are bound together by their shared origin. No others carry within themselves the same set of memories, the jokes and idiosyncracies, the aroma of certain meals, the sound of departed voices, the games they played, and the winding way to school.

If they are lucky, get-togethers permit a unique source of happiness long set aside. As Rabbi Nachman of Breslau wrote, “Nothing is as liberating as joy. It frees the mind and fills it with tranquility.”*

If your sibs live, there is still time to create or recreate delight in the tie to brothers and sisters.

How do I know?

I am proud to be Eddie and Jack Stein’s brother; the Stein Boys have done it together.

==========

*Thanks to Micaela Bonetti for drawing my attention to Rabbi Nachman of Breslau’s quotation.

The first image is Irene and Her Sister,1925, by Tamara de Lempicka. It is followed by Picasso’s Two Brothers from 1906. Both of these were sourced from Wikiart.org/ Finally, Brother and Sister, an 1898 sculpture by Julien Dillens sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

October 1, 2023

Overcoming the Challenge of Conversation and Using It to Your Benefit

Our conversations with others aren’t always as easy as we wish. From the beginning, there can be misunderstanding and self-consciousness. To the good, our tools to enhance human contact include deeds and words. But we often forget two more: body language and silence.

Soundlessness fuels terror for some. Perhaps we don’t know what to say, which words to use, or when to voice them, and we fear appearing foolish. The clock ticks away, and the silent seconds stretch forever, like taffy or bubble gum.

Silence and patience are available to aid communication. I spoke about this with the redoubtable Wynne Leon and Dr. Victoria Atkinson on their podcast, Episode 37: The Waiting Game with Dr. Gerald Stein.

Waiting in a state of quiet calm permits events to unfold, creating a sense of power and control within the one who understands how to use it.

Think of a stalled dating dialogue. As those awkward moments continue without a topic for discussion, you might speak with your counterpart about times when the two of you enjoy stillness over sound.

It is vital to recognize that one of the goals of encountering new people is to find out if they are compatible with you, not vice versa.

Focusing on them — their manner of dress and way of sitting or standing, allows you to infer a lot. Note hand and arm movements, facial expressions, quality of voice, reaction to the shared surroundings, and apparent discomfort or ease — and you find out still more.

The Dalai Lama said,

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.”

I would add, watch while you concentrate on hearing the stranger. Rehearsing a short list of questions to be asked often helps take the focus off of you.

It might help you if you think of conversation as an experiment, a chance to learn and grow. A lifetime gives you endless possibilities, from chats with the checker at the grocery store to interaction with parents, siblings, people of unfamiliar cultures, teachers, therapists, and others.

The paralyzing date experience potentially feeds your evolution, helps accumulate confidence, and enables mastery of anxiety with each additional opportunity. Reminding oneself that the moment does not mean life or death tends to reduce a sense of catastrophe. Recalling that you have recovered from more devasting events in your past can do the same. A meditation practice might be stabilizing, as well.

The following comes from the Bright Way ZEN website:

The Buddha taught there are five things to consider before speaking. Is what you’re about to say

  1. Factual and true?
  2. Helpful, or beneficial?
  3. Spoken with kindness and good-will (that is, hoping for the best for all involved)?
  4. Endearing (that is, spoken gently, in a way the other person can hear)?
  5. Timely (occasionally something true, helpful, and kind will not be endearing, or easy for someone to hear, in which case we think carefully about when to say it)?

Kindness and gentleness do not require words. You can smile at the other, touch, and make eye contact. The above video of Marcel Marceau demonstrates a more comprehensive range of facial and bodily communication in two minutes than most of us use daily.

Sometimes, a question followed by your silence can produce surprising and beneficial consequences. In my podcast conversation, I spoke of a 15-year-old with ADHD whom I treated in a psychiatric hospital because of his reckless and uncontrolled misbehavior.

By the time of the interaction I described, I knew the young man well and asked him something important. His initial reaction displayed impulsivity and thoughtlessness. I then waited to find out if he might offer a more insightful response. He did, ending the moment’s stillness perhaps 30 seconds later. It proved to be the foundation upon which we built the treatment.

Think back to childhood; I suspect you recall your parents’ mood changes. They may have been able to convey their disapproval by facial expression alone, and you became adept at reading them.

Face-to-face time with a stranger reveals essential qualities in the other. Does he pay attention to you? Does he want to discover more about you? Does he cut you off as you speak or look at his watch or cell phone instead of you?

You might find that limiting your speech lets you determine whether you would care to know this woman or man better. New acquaintances must prove to you that future time with them can be worthwhile. Your time holds value.

To gather more about the teenage psychiatric hospital patient I treated, a funny dating story, and much else, I hope you listen to Episode 37: The Waiting Game with Dr. Gerald Stein.

As WFMT Radio’s legendary Studs Terkel always ended his glorious interview show, “Take it easy, but take it.”

=======

The image after the Marcel Marceau YouTube video includes Ronit Alkabats and Yonat Segal in the episode Blind Meeting from Stories from Late Night. It is the work of the Snowman.

The bottom photo shows Two Disabled People on a Date, by Chona Kasinger for Disabled and Here.

April 9, 2023

To Love in Spite of Everything

Most of us have stories about our parents. When I get together with my brothers, we always call up funny incidents or their witty sayings.

The folks have been gone over 20 years, and I can assure you not all the events were rosy. These days, however, at a more than two-decade distance, we don’t care much about our old complaints.

Like water against the rock, they have been worn away.

Had you asked me about my early years a few decades back, I wouldn’t have spoken as often about the fun times as the dark ones.

They grew up in the Great Depression, and nothing about the economic survival of the Fabians (Jeanette Stein’s family) and Milton Stein’s home in the same period was easy. Nor did their parents win childrearing awards.

I was a therapist to people who still carried the psychological wounds of childhood. My understanding of their experiences sometimes grew out of my own youth. 

A number of my patients wished for different parents, a desire I never thought about but could grasp from the stories these women and men told me.

That raises questions.

Did you long for alternative guardians? Do you believe such a solution could have saved them from each other? Would it, at least, have prevented a portion of the emotional injury you incurred?

Of course, almost all of our caretakers did considerate things dumped in the same garbage can with the bad ones worth erasing.

What else would have lodged in the discard pile if the wish became real?

All your school friends, including a magnificent classmate met in fourth grade and held close to the present day. The games you enjoyed, especially those you won.

Remember too, the people who recognized the lovely voice you possessed, how fine your drawing was, and the teachers who displayed kindness or demanded more academic effort until finally, you gave it.

You’d never have encountered the next-door neighbor who played catch with you because he knew you missed your dad and the kindly owner of the corner candy store. He called you “son” and shared baseball stories. 

Don’t forget another adult who saw the goodness in you when the folks at home turned away in disgust.

In this imaginary vanishing of the elders, your first love departs, too, along with all the joyous, light, romantic dates with others.

These and 1000 other experiences — absent from your life.

Well, I hear you saying your life would have been even better with an alternative Mother and Father designed for each other and you.

Perhaps, but you’ve forgotten one missing ingredient to that superior life.

You.

I’m speaking of your life itself because if the same imperfect pair hadn’t made love when they did, you’d never have been born. Imagine a different growing sperm/egg couple taking your place on the bridge to the world.

Your parents gave you life, a chance, even if the winning ticket didn’t seem worth the paper it was printed on. Since you are reading this, it means you’ve found value in the time and the opportunity.

Much as we curse the darkness, the door exists to seek the light.

Do you doubt this? Read or listen to the thoughtful short poem by Sharon Olds, I Go Back to May 1937.

If the author’s apparent autobiographical details are her own, she describes how she invented a way to manage despite her parents.

There are many ways of overcoming.

Take one.

==========

The top image is Georges Braque’s Still Life with Ace of Hearts, 1914.

The first recitation of the poem includes the text as read by Guy Mulinder. His version allows you to read along with him or turn off the sound and read silently.

The second, by John Lithgow, is also very fine.

May 15, 2022

An Unwritten Diary

Its title is All His Life. The book’s cover illustrates a beautiful baby boy with garlands hung above the newborn’s crib, topped with a ribbon sewed into and above the fabric.

The 9″ x 12″ object has a satin-like covering, perhaps rayon. For the time, the volume probably wasn’t cheap. A gift, I suspect.

The first printed page offered the following:

All his life
is written here.
In pictured prose
And records clear —
From Infant small
To manly state,
Are told events
Both small and great.

The hardcover was published in 1944, but I came along later.

This particular copy of All His Life was about me.

The pages are yellow now, despite the old plastic bag in which the volume has been housed. I’m not pristine myself.

After naming the doctors who delivered me, the date, and the time, Jeanette Stein wrote her first question to my dad:

Is he cute??

Dad’s answer:

Don’t expect too much at first!!

I guess Milton Stein never got trained as a cheerleader!

The remainder of the 60-page volume is filled with more babies and boys, in colorfully lithographed paintings by Edna Mason Kaula, and space for answers to more printed questions. My mother’s elegant handwriting is featured in each response.

For example, the 11th page lists early visitors to the hospital or our apartment in the Logan Square neighborhood. Many spaces instruct the writer to “paste snapshot here.” Two blank spots are shaped like feet, two others like hands, all awaiting a bit of ink on those body parts for an imprint of my tiny appendages.

Gerald M. Stein’s weight at birth remains readable, written with a fountain pen in the same deep blue used for all the other entries. The mass-market ballpoint variety was new and uncommon.

Then?

Nothing? The last entry listed my height.

No first words, date of an initial carriage ride, or timing of the first smile. No record of when I discovered my hands. Nor can one find evidence of when Gerry began to walk or photos of anyone else, though I have an album including many early childhood pictures.

The publisher’s plan anticipated the growing young man would take over entering information after a while. I didn’t even know my parents received such a present until they died in their 80s, over 20 years ago.

Empty room for entries included friends’ names, hobbies, teachers, favorite subjects, ambitions, and space for “my philosophy,” which makes me laugh. Not the kind of thoughtfulness I possessed as an infant or a young man.

Funny about that in another way, as well. I only began dedicated reading of philosophy at age 65.

There is a blank spot for adult fingerprints. Perhaps someone imagined I’d take up a life of crime! Ah, but the times were more innocent, as evidenced by a place for my social security number, making identity theft easier. That common form of illegality took more years to emerge.

I’m sure my birth overjoyed my parents. Moreover, I quelled my mom’s fears by turning into a good-looking, curly-haired little boy. Well-behaved, too, by all reports.

Why then no additional attention to the book? I imagine my folks had plenty to do, buying the required necessities, doctor’s appointments, teaching me language, and learning how to handle a vulnerable creature. Everything was the first time for them and for me.

Mom told my wife she didn’t understand how to put me into the crib and just dropped me in at first. I hope she bent over a bit. Guidance from her mother couldn’t have been helpful, given grandma’s tendency to criticize.

Still, I would like to know more about my first few years. My children might, too. The time and its history fled like a sandcastle’s erasure by the incoming tide. So are the names of my parents’ youthful friends and distant relatives in the surviving photos stored in the bedroom closet.

Some people look familiar, but not even nicknames or occupations remain, except perhaps in the memory of a few of their descendants. As Goethe expected, names vanish “like sound and smoke.”

Most of us hope to make a mark on the world, something to outlast our lifetime. Children and grandchildren are the only posterity I care much about. That and the continuation of a habitable planet, a republican form of democracy (also called a democratic republic), along with the presence of enough enlightened and committed people to make it so.

As I got older, having achieved more in my life than I imagined (though nothing of grand, historical importance), my ambition slipped away. No major loss. I never persuaded myself of the meaningful value of what the Western World was selling. I didn’t even try.

Beyond what I’ve said, I will add a couple of things you’ll find contradictory and add one more thought as a bonus:

  • I don’t find most well-educated people as rational as they think. And, yes, I include Dr. Stein in this group on occasion.
  • Despite humanity’s irrational pursuits, life can be delightful. I find myself smiling and laughing more than ever.
  • I take myself less seriously, too,

No advice today, just the above observations. Make of these statements as much or as little as you wish. And I should add, try not to carry grudges, but give as much love as you can muster. You will never run out.

Any other way will reduce your well-being and the happiness of those you care about — and those you will care about if you know them.

I guess there was some advice after all.

September 8, 2021

On Adult Attachment to Children

There is nothing like the wordless sadness of a beautiful face dear to you. I’m referring to the small, huggable, wide-eyed ones when overtaken by uncertain illness.

“Mine!” is one of his favorite words, claiming property his bigger brother shows an interest in. The malady, however, offered nothing he wanted to keep.

The upbeat mood of the smiling, sweet-as-chocolate cherub melts in a few minutes. Energy departs, spirit evaporates, words transmute into inexpressable discomfort. The flush of heat rises, but the body descends.

The sick two-year-old loses his chatter.

My youngest grandson does not reach for a hand — doesn’t lead you to a toy, or a place, or try to have you for himself instead of sharing you with his six-year-old brother.

It must be tough to be a little fellow, hard to make your imperfect utterances understood.

Now he wants the hugs only a mom and dad can supply — seeks their comfort and embrace, the safety he can’t describe.

You watch this happen. COVID fertilizes your fear, growing like Jack’s speedy beanstalk. The concern is new, though other epochs had their own dangers — smallpox, polio, plague …

The moppet slumps into slumber. You depart, but the precious person grips your heart, now shadowed by a cloud.

The day passes. Your wife’s sleep is fitful.

The golden boy holds the sorrowful power to instill worry.

Daughter #2, his mother, sends a message early the next day.

A long nap, his parents’ knowing, double-duty attention, food, and more sleep sweep the danger away. The tentative all-clear sounds.

The news makes the sun shine brighter today. The superpowers of small children extend to the stars.

Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.”

What the writer didn’t say might have also been spoken about love. We are held fast by our loves, the closest friends, our offspring, and our grandkids, too.

Those attachments can do far worse to us than the bit of concern we had that day. Much, much worse. Many near misses and joys await. Best not to borrow trouble.

But this two-year-old deserves credit. His bounce-back brought the sky’s warmest blue. Only the dearest hearts inside you do this. He sprinkles fairy dust and doesn’t even know it.

==============

The first photo dates from 1934 and was published in Modern Screen magazine in 1950. The two-year-old girl is Elizabeth Taylor, with her mother Sara Sothern and brother Howard.

The second image was taken by Rita Martin and shows an unnamed child in 1912. Both of the photographs were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

August 15, 2021

Are You More like Your Parents than You Think?

Judging how much you take after your parents becomes a question of whether you can bear reality, at least if they fell short. 

Short of what?

Benign attributes such as respectability, kindness, or caretaking.

In that case, our forgiving brains tend to airbrush the reflected image shining back at us from the mirror, so we miss the resemblance.

We’d rather observe a face we admire or tolerate than one with enough flaws to trigger the scream, “Oh, no!”

Why?

We are prone not to unsettle our self-evaluation or family relationships. Nor does society want to hear from “ungrateful” children.

A human’s capacity to create a beam of insight into himself and the world always contends with his desire to sleepwalk through the undesirable parts.

Experience suggests the majority choose the parent they like as the one who they most resemble. The adult child also may have acquired a blindspot for his own dark side, the part resembling one or the other guardian.

Clinical psychologists, however, comment on the danger of becoming like the person you hate, as if you received a transfusion of his hot temper or critical nature. Therapists encounter patients with unresolved parental issues with regularity.

Psychotherapists attribute the cause to continuing anger at the one who harmed them. As the top painting illustrates, such emotion gets displaced, whether at another or ourselves.

We all possess the capacity for ire, a quality required for self-defense. If the fund of internal fury looms larger or smaller than conditions justify, it becomes a problem.

Anger turned inward is a longstanding definition of clinical depression. An oversized storehouse of rage within a human receptacle is corrosive no matter where it is directed.

To continue the topic of blindspots, we not only turn from recognition of lamentable similarities to a disliked parent, we often put the “good” one on a pedestal. This calls for a bit of a whitewash to disguise his shortcomings or invent excuses for him.

The paint-over also ignores our favorite’s failure to acknowledge or prevent unfortunate actions by the one we identify as the principal contributor to our unhappiness.

Our folks always require some slack, especially when they lack supportive social institutions, friends, or family to help with childrearing. Neither does single parenthood, and the necessity of moneymaking allow much room for attention to little ones. Inadequate housing, unsafe communities, and more compound the demands of bringing up offspring.

No mom or dad manages the task without mistakes.

Part of our life’s work is to choose models for our behavior. Parents are the obvious and necessary candidates because of every youngster’s long period of dependency. Therefore, the default tendency is to view them as better than they are, lest we live in fear of having no adequate protectors.

With the passage of time and the enlargement of independence, it is beneficial to recognize this pair represents only two versions of pursuing a satisfying life — two sets of values and choices.

Moreover, because they are usually older than we are by a matter of decades, their perspective and guidance do not necessarily fit us.

A wise parent remembers enough of his early years to be helpful. One with little recall of what it means to be young might not do his best.

Nor do those who dismiss the unique difficulties of their children’s lives increase their chances of offering the young ones empathy.

—-

The ability to discover ourselves in our folks must overcome the age difference. The obstacles to seeing sameness are magnified by the physical and psychological differences that come with the passing years.

Allow me to explain.

A dad, say, 30 or more years your senior, later might no longer be the same person he was when governing his life and yours. Aging, personal growth, self-reflection, and experience cause revisions of his former state, though not every alteration enhances his being.

On the other hand, you may begin to recognize similarities not before discernable when you get older. Growth into adulthood should increase psychological awareness, though not everyone becomes enlightened.

Once the wellspring of your existence is dead, of course, he doesn’t run ahead of you in chronological progression, and you might perceive yourself in the later versions of who he was.

Gender differences also hide qualities that would have been discerned had you shared the identical birth assignment of sex with the parent you believe to be less akin to you.

The essential message here is to beware of mutating into a form of yourself you would advise others not to become.

Consider taking an occasional moment to reflect on the characteristics describing those who gave you life. Time and experience sometimes alter the look back.

While I cannot promise what visions then emerge, don’t rule out the possibility of surprise. By examining the contents of old luggage and saved correspondence, the opportunity exists to assume the role of historians of our families and ourselves.

The task can be like reading an outstanding book for a second or third time, spaced years apart. The writing has not changed, but the reader has, thus remaking the words and their meaning.

New discoveries and insights are possible when we revisit the memory of long-departed people, especially those who were once so important. Unrealized gifts can be uncovered even in the baggage they leave behind, including an unsuspected one: your forgiveness of them and its blessing to you.

As I’ve implied, holding anger forever punishes the one who holds it regardless of whether the other ever receives his just deserts.

==========

The top image is called Anger Transference by Richard Sargent, 1954. It was sourced from History Daily. The next one is Happy Parents and Baby by Sheldonl, from Wikimedia Commons.

July 5, 2021

Realizing You Do Not Own Your Child’s Life (and Other Parenting Challenges)

Children ring bells in us. It is as if we were programmed to recognize ourselves in them, often unconsciously. Our instinctive response to feelings, vulnerabilities, and turning points experienced by the offspring touch upon similar vulnerabilities in us at about the same age.

This personal reaction is a historical one triggered by seeing the self in them, a kind of identification.

Significant and challenging things happen to all of us as we grow up. You are now the dear parent. They happened to you, too.

Each new life is vulnerable and tender, not yet hardened to defend itself. Perhaps you suffered humiliation or felt pressured, ignored, bullied, or worse. Maybe you pursued a course you later identified was wrong for you.

The paternal or maternal role now requires thoughtful consideration of how to proceed. Will you give your offspring what they need to avoid the damage you sustained? Perhaps you might push them to make different life selections or sidestep wrong turns you continue to regret.

The decision you made might have been running with the troubled crowd, sex, drugs, or giving up on school to emphasize sports. Numerous possibilities exist.

Haunted by the shadow of the road not taken, you are in danger again. So is the boy or girl in your charge, though not necessarily from the risk you encountered.

Time to look in the mirror.

I am suggesting you, dear parent. Your place in the minor’s life places him or her in jeopardy if you should fumble the job of being a mom or dad.

You face a test of your adequacy as a guardian, one who can separate your own identity from that of your youngster.

For example, your authority allows you to demand this admiring schoolgirl to study. No one will stop you from ominous hovering and harsh enforcement of failure to ensure the desired goal.

The power imbalance also permits you to restrict her participation in social life with people you decide are bad (even when almost everyone looks dangerous to you).

These decisions carry a substantial downside. Take another example. Detective-like inspection for signs of substance abuse (or any other actions you find uncomfortable) may drive the son who loves you toward the behavior you wish to prevent.

Regardless of your motives, results count more than noble intentions.

Other possible pitfalls also await moms, dads — kids and young adults.

Again the question hangs in the air. What do you do with your individual history of upbringing by your folks? You now occupy the role they did.

If you believe they were always right, you might impose a similar manner of child-rearing used with you. If the young one is like you and your parents did a fine job, this style could work.

But what if he isn’t like you? What if the circumstances of his life and the time in which you both now live have changed? Will the default tendency to do unto your child what was done unto you still suffice?

Do you instead believe the teen’s grandparents made dire mistakes with you?

Yes, you say. Will you then dispose of every thought and action they had? Will you throw out even their preference of one faith over another, fish over fowl, and their enjoyment of vigorous exercise?

Understanding you are not your offspring (and he is not you) is essential, no matter the likenesses. To the degree his temperament and inborn talents are different from yours, basing your parenting strategy on what you needed is questionable.

The blueprint for fostering any unformed life must be tailored to whomever he is. When parents say they treated all their children in the same way, I always imagine the fitness of such an approach was doubtful with at least one.

Here is another piece of hard-won advice. I am assuming you are a loving custodian of your kids in all these examples. You gave your infant life, an experience beyond words, the most astonishing of your life. Wishing the best for this helpless, beautiful creature is your desire. She depends upon you for everything.

However, with time, if the child proceeds along the usual route, he acquires skills and the goal of independent life. A moment arrives when he wants to make choices with which you disagree. Say, a different career, school, moving to a new location, or his own vision of the place of religion in his life.

To the extent your ideas don’t match, reasoned discussions should not assume he is mistaken. He may be the wise one in this. In any case, remember this: you gave him life, but you do not own his life.

Our daughters and sons take the captain’s chair on their voyage into the future. They often want our support, but they do not want us as their judge.

Check the proprietorship records or the birth certificate of your kids. What you will find, perhaps in invisible ink, is a rental agreement. The maternal and paternal responsibilities of direction and safekeeping last for a short while, not forever.

After that, the baton is passed to the next runner in the relay race we call world history. He might not be everything you envisioned. Do not let your preconceptions block you from honoring the best in him. He could be less in some areas, but he also may be much more.

========================

The top image is Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso, 1921. In second place comes Oswaldo Guayasamin’s 1989 Ternura. The last masterpiece is Mother and Child by Wilfredo Lam, 1957. The first and final works were sourced from the Art Institute of Chicago. Guayasamin’s painting came from Wikiart.org/