I’ve been feeling old. I went climbing yesterday with my son Silas. We’ve been climbing together for about five years and his fearlessness and strength have amazed me from the start, but the difference now is that he’s a professional. He works at the wall every weekend and he climbs at a higher standard than I could ever have dreamed of. And when I climb, he helps me. It’s a wonderful thing. And I feel old.
Other amazing things have been happening recently too. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been to the graduations of both my daughters, Miriam the theologian and Esther the meteorologist/mathematician. They are super smart. And I feel old.
Last week I went to the launch of a book that my godson has written. This evening, I’m meeting up with another of my godsons, who has moved to Norway, set up a business and is bringing his new Norwegian son for me to meet for the first time – my first god-grandson.
I’ve seldom felt so thrilled and delighted. Or so old.
The point of all this is not that my children and godchildren are better than everyone else’s (although they are), it’s that as they’ve grown and learned and left me behind, I find myself, like thousands and thousands of parents, feeling pride, bemusement and approaching redundancy in equal measure.
It’s natural, I suppose: Leonardo da Vinci wrote that it is a poor pupil that doesn’t surpass their teacher. And that’s all very well, but where does it leave the teacher, or the parent? Do we just let go and get old?
St Paul had a friend, Timothy, who was a Christian leader at Ephesus in Turkey. Paul trained him and taught him – but long after Timothy was running his own church, he kept on writing to him, encouraging him, helping him without getting in the way.
And I reckon, maybe, that’s the trick: to find a way to be a useful resource even when we’re no longer the only resource. So we write, perhaps, and talk; we advise when necessary and sometimes just stand back in amazement.
Unbelievably, our children do outgrow our universal parental expertise. But sometimes, like Silas helping me at the wall, we get some of it back when the pupil surpasses the teacher.
The picture is of the Boy Silas bouldering on granite at Vedauwoo WY, about 20 miles SE of Laramie.