A Different Kinda Love

Recent passings have gotten me to thinking about how we love others. Naturally, there are differences in how we love everyone. But I think when its distilled down, it mainly centers around the old Freudian schema of mom and dad. Given we end up loving our parents (despite all their imperfections and all the things they may have ‘done to us’), it seems to me we tend to love and respect our fathers and love and adore our mothers. Maybe it stems from wanting fathers to be our heroes and mothers to be our champions.

Fathers demand a level of accomplishment, of performance; mothers provide support, comfort, unconditional love. Mom is a port in a storm; dad anticipates we will confront the storm and see it through. He leads by example and expects we have been paying attention in learning how to accomplish all that. Mom wants us to know there is always someone there no matter the result.

It’s the rare parent who falls neatly into these cubbyholes. There’s usually some back and forth, some mixing and matching to be sure. My upbringing, and not coincidently the upbringing of my sons, has centered around these ideas of parenting roles. Having raised our boys, I certainly have more gratitude and respect for how my parents raised us. It’s a job that can never be close to perfect; we only do the best we can with the tools we’ve been given. And far and away, those tools and our perceptions of them are mostly learned from how we were raised. Not an ideal laboratory, to say the least. Aside from reading, watching and asking for advice, however, it’s pretty much all we have. Parents have to rely on common sense, intuition, and hopefully a strong moral compass.

In lieu of going completely down the parenting rabbit hole, however, I really want to think about how love differs from person to person and who and how they love. For me, it was definitely the love/respect duality for my father. He was complicated for me, and simple at the same time. How could he be so different – easy-going and admired by so many people, yet so demanding, serious and strict to his children? I feared him, but was intensely proud of his abilities and accomplishments. I learned so much from him just by watching, but also being tasked with chores and a no-nonsense attitude towards problem solving. Morals, strength of character, doing the hard thing because it was right, and learning those traditional male tasks requiring hand tools and mechanical skills; you know, fixing things. Then there were the nasty ones like digging ditches, laying sewer lines, fixing crawl space plumbing leaks and the like. I loved my dad, but he was a tough love as it often felt unrequited. That can be hard from someone whom you desperately want approval. Still, it’s how the role of father was defined in those days.

There was a lot less duality regarding my mother. She was a model of consistency. Always full of consideration, she was as close to the ideal mom as I can imagine. Supportive, comforting, always there when you needed her. She’s only been gone 9 months now, but she’ll always be strongly with me. I adored her always. She was the most remarkably consistent and compassionate person I have ever met. As I got older, and especially in her last couple of years, the little moments of support became mutual – us against the world; knowing she was always, always there, as I think she knew I was for her – there was a lot of strength derived from that.

I guess in the end it was a good balance, as good parenting should be. My dad was demanding, strict, demonstrating a bit of aloofness towards his children yet teaching and exacting lessons all the while, while my mom filled in all the other needs of nurturing and emotional support combined with the occasional timely cautionary admonishment. She was always there to help you pick up your pieces, just as your dad was there to say ‘I told you so.’

If you were lucky, this may not be too different than your relationship with your parents. I feel lucky to have had two who cared and who took the time to establish standards, exact consequences, and provide support. We can save the particular horror stories for another day.