good parents

I've got good parents

When I was an unruly teenager, my father used to say, "If every father were like me, the world would be a better place." I would roll my eyes and never believe it to be true.
I have learned that it is true.
If all parents were like my parents, the world would indeed be a better place.

My father, at the tender age of 67 (am I allowed to tell?) just spent half the summer riding his Goldwing across the country to attend a motorbike convention. Last year, he drove the Highway to the Sun in Montana, and has hopes to ride to Alaska in the near future. There was a time when I did not think my dad was so cool.

In grade twelve, my brother and I had a little party while my parents were away. The only damage was to my dad's leather chaps, which "Paul" had decided to try on, and the zipper pulled off the leather about an inch. My mother had taught me to be an excellent seamstress at a young age, so I fixed them, thinking no one would know. After my parents return, we were sitting at the supper table and my father asked what happened to his chaps.
"What makes you think something happened?" I asked as innocently as possible.
"Because they were unzipped on the outer leg. I always have them zipped."
Oh crap, I thought to myself. What am I going to say?
"Alida's friend ripped them at the party," my brother Eric nonchalantly offered.
My father sat waiting for a reply, uncharacteristically quiet.
"Well, you are the only dad at school who rides a motorbike, and all my friends think you are so cool, so Paul wanted to try on your chaps. Because he thinks you're cool," I offer.
Another quiet pause…
"Your friends think I'm cool?"
I didn't get in trouble for the party or the torn chaps.

Riding a motorbike is not the only thing that makes my father cool.
My father tells me he loves me everyday.
My father has helped run a summer camp for children and adults with developmental disabilities for over 15 years and loves every minute of it.
My father volunteers just about as much as he used to work. He devotes an evening a week to people with disabilities, has provided respite to families coping with dementia, delivers furniture to carless people, drove single parents to a weekly meeting for years, cuddled babies in the hospital, and now volunteers in the church nursery just so he can hold babies (parents, bring your babies to him!). His latest bragging right involves singing at the Native Women's talent show, in jail, and receiving a t-shirt for it. He struts around like a peacock in that shirt. My father actually brags about knowing convicted murderers and playing scrabble with them.
Really, you can't get much cooler than that.
I've got a good father.



My mother can do anything. Really, if she decides she wants to try something, she will get a book, read about it, and do it (okay, maybe not extreme mountain biking). When I was five, she built a picnic table for my dollhouse to an exact scale. She decided to learn how to spin wool, so she checked out books from the library, bought a second-hand spinning wheel, some dirty wool from a farmer, and transformed the wool from the sheeps back to a hat that I still have. She recently decided to try watercolour painting. Her first painting is a mountain scene that I would frame and hang on my wall. Give her a scrap of fabric and she will turn it into a ball gown. She is resourceful, and creative and imaginative.

My mother's life has been one of service to others, and I don't think she even realizes that.
Shortly after marrying, my parents became foster parents for seven emotionally and developmentally delayed boys. For two years she mothered them, cooked for them, hugged them, took them to soccer practice and doctors appointments. In short, she loved them.
Having children did not stop her service. My dad used to take us for ice cream on Saturdays while my mother served meals in a soup kitchen. We indulged ourselves while she indulged others.
She operated a support group for single parents that was so successful, social workers around the city referred clients to the groups. It was a full-time job to run that group; arrange meals, rides, outings, speakers, free haircuts, free mechanics for broken cars, retreats, crafts, crisis counseling. She could easily spend 40 hour a week volunteering, and she never once complained about it.
During one of my mother's birthday parties, a mentally ill woman came to the door claiming some one was trying to murder her. My mother spent the whole evening listening to the woman, and then getting to her an appropriate place for help. We ate cake while she counseled in the spare room. Indulging others.
She has served as a deacon at church so many times and helped so many people that she discovered from a prescription drug addict a few years back that "her number was on the streets." 1-800-Marian-helps. Indulging others.
She is now starting a grandmothers-to-grandmothers group in Edmonton to raise money and offer support to the grandmothers raising their grandchildren here in Kenya.
If I can indulge in service to others a mere fraction of what my mother has indulged, I will be a glutton for sacrificial love and unbridled compassion.
I've got a good mother.