I cannot help but appreciate and admire children who pamper their parents. Yes, these sons who, with their strong shoulders and arms, lift their frail fathers onto and from their wheelchairs, and these daughters who, with their ever gentle hands, comb their aged mothers’ hair and lift spoons to their mouths as they feed them with oatmeal or champurado, I appreciate and admire what they do. I like children who, as grown-ups, no longer expect their fathers to spend and their mothers to cook meals for them; who instead spend and cook for their parents; who listen to and assuage their parents’ woes, and no longer burden them with theirs; who care for them, as their parents did when they were young. I like children who treat their parents with kindness, realizing that they are deserving of this caring not only because they are old but also because they have been good parents, who worked hard to provide them with food, enough for their proper growth; clothes, suitable for Sunday Mass; a roof, never mind the leaks during storms; and, yes, even books, though tattered and with a few pages partly torn. I like children who understand, completely, that their parents, now old, deserve to be cared for and pampered by them. It’s all about gratitude, which I believe comes with maturity. It is, I suppose, all about realizing when it is finally time to stop asking for things, and knowing when the giving should begin; understanding that parents can only do so much, with their finite stamina and resources, and only up to a certain point in their limited, meaningful lives; accepting that enough should be just that, enough. Parents, of course, generally do not expect any form of gratitude from their children. Most of them will always be parents and will continue to love and care for their children, regardless. They would find both joy and fulfillment in simply seeing their children grow up well, happy, standing on their own, and providing for themselves and their own families. These would usually be enough for them. After all, the best gift any child can truly offer to his parents is to let them know that he is all right and that he has done well in his life; that he has not disappointed. But I am almost certain they would be pleased with and would embrace it just the same, this gratitude from their children, whenever it would come their way. This expression of gratitude, it need not be extravagant; it may be as simple as a heartfelt hug or a phone call or a “kumusta na” instead of “pahingi” or “may kailangan ako” or “may problema ako.” These children who pamper their parents, they understand this. This pampering can spring from the pampering they themselves may have received from their parents when they were children. Quid pro quo, some would say. There is nothing innately wrong with this. After all, “the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Even spoiled brats can turn out to be grateful children who later in their lives end up “spoiling” their parents. This also is good. This pampering usually comes though from a basic understanding that their parents toiled hard to provide them with, aside from the other essentials in life which I mentioned earlier, education, which eventually, hopefully leads to their, well, autonomy, if not complete independence. Children never really completely outgrow their dependence on their parents. They shall always be children to them in terms of the wisdom they can impart and the guidance only they can offer. I suppose it would be all right to include among these the occasional tinola and menudo from their mothers. These, they shall always seek from them even after these children shall have established their own lives away from the home their parents built for them, where they cared for them when they were young; even after they shall themselves have become parents to their own children. Happily for most, most children do outgrow their reliance on their parents for “material things” and thus provide them with their well-deserved “rest” from these “parental obligations.” I, of course, acknowledge that not all children do this, or would want to do this, or are capable of doing this, or understand that they ought to do this. We are all, after all, made from different molds. But these children who do, those who pamper their parents, who selflessly care for them when they are old, who no longer feel they are still “entitled” to be taken care of by their parents, who feel that their parents have done enough for them, I cannot help but appreciate and admire them. I do long to be one of them, and pray that I be given the strength and the means to be like them. And I will not pretend. I also think it would be nice if my own children would, one day, pamper me.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 23:17:03 +0000
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