My father taught me the value of sharing in a child’s struggles
My father danced up the street on his way back home, triumphantly waving a slip of paper high in the air: that is how I received the news that I had gotten a D in college physics.
As a commuter college student in Brooklyn in the 1960s with dreams of becoming a doctor, working hard was my passport to good grades. Or so I thought, until I experienced college physics, a pre-med requirement. When I put down my pen at the close of my final exam, my heart sank. Watts, joules, amps, pressure, energy, force, velocity, acceleration — it was all a nightmare of inscrutable concepts. I found myself praying simply to pass — anything not to have to retake the course.
Arriving home, I reluctantly climbed the stairs to our apartment. As he did after every test, my father asked, “How did it go?”
“It was awful,” I cried. “I don’t want to find out that I failed.”
“You are home now, with me,” he said, taking my hands in his. “Give your worries to me. I will carry them on my shoulders for you.”
With no computers and no internet, grades were posted over a twoweek period in the Physics Department, and students were expected to stop by in person to find out their fate. My father knew how hard this was for me. He wanted to make it better, so he did the only thing he could do: he spared me the subway trip into Manhattan. For three days, my father — a bald, stooped, 55year-old refugee who could barely speak English — made his way to NYU, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with all the anxious pre-med students as they pored over the coded numbers to locate their grades.
This is why, on a hot summer day in 1963, he bounded down our street, smiling from ear to ear. Up the stairs he pranced: “You did it! You got a ‘D’!”
We hugged and jumped up and down. Who would have believed that my lesson in physics was that a “D” was the best news?
My parents never read a book about parenting. They never went to college. They were Holocaust survivors. For them, like so many refugees, parenting was about instilling in me the ambition to live the American Dream. Saving every penny, they worked long, hard hours, six days a week.
My parents loved each other a lot, but they fought with the same intensity that they loved.
My father was also bipolar. When he was depressed, he dragged himself home from his job — as a clerk in a New York department store — only to throw himself onto his bed and cry out “Mama.” When he slipped into his hypomanic states, I was so grateful to see him smile that I didn’t even mind (much) when he sometimes made an inappropriate remark or talked a tad too much.
Still, I always felt cherished. Maybe it was because in the same way that I experienced my parents’ turmoil and laughter, they experienced mine. When they cried, I cried. When I laughed, they laughed. When they suffered, I suffered. We were a family.
Do I think this is the way it should be for children growing up? No, of course not. Kids are supposed to feel safe, not buffeted by the pain of poverty and mental illness and the emotional sequela of post-Holocaust demons. Like all parents, mine hated to see me struggle and wanted me to have everything I desired.
When I was raising my own children, my inclination was to do all I could to ease their lives. I chose their schools carefully and helped them succeed in their studies. I arranged for summer camps, extracurricular activities, play dates. Yet they learned, as I did, that despite one’s best efforts, illnesses, death, heartbreak and disappointments arise. Life happens.
As a psychiatrist, I know the importance of a calm and solid parental presence. Lacking the sage advice found in parenting books that emphasize the value of steadiness and peace, my parents did not control the natural chaos of life events. But by not over-controlling, as so many of us do these days, my parents taught me some important lessons. In fact, looking back, I wonder whether there were advantages to their way.
There is no shame in giving children all the things that one can provide to smooth their paths. Still, I think it is OK not to do so. In fact, there may be value to not doing so.
My father must have felt as powerless as I felt when I told him I was sure I had failed physics. He couldn’t pay for a tutor or intercede with my professor to get me a better grade. But what he did was even more valuable: he embraced me when I felt helpless so that even when I was deeply distressed, I felt safe and secure. Even though he died many years ago, the power of his love is so great that when I feel stuck, I still feel comforted by his virtual embrace.
By growing up with less than — rather than more — I felt loved and accepted as I was. I learned that life is often complicated and messy and that it is not the job of parents to undo this reality. In fact, it is impossible. When parents stick with their children in the face of adversity, as my father always did, on the other side is an outcome that may be surprisingly satisfying.