Parents

Go read Elisabeth's post about her daughter's friends (if she hasn't taken it down--she's worried about their privacy). You could go in lots of directions commenting on this situation: homophobia, teen sexuality, the place of the legal system in private life... But what struck me most were these lines:

Her mother, alas, thinks it's her job to warn people against her daughter. She tried to warn me. I told her I liked her daughter and would try to help her. She warned F's parents, who apparently acted much as I did for a while, but then--didn't.

One of the defining features of my life has been the essential knowledge that wherever I was, whatever trouble I got into, if I called my father, he would come and get me (you've been infinitely supportive too, Mom, but when it comes to plucking me off a Nepali mountaintop, somehow Daddy always came to mind). I've disagreed with my parents, fought with my parents, and, I'm quite sure, been disapproved of by my parents, but I always knew that my parents were there for me, no matter what. In turn, I know I will always be there for my parents: right now my sister and I disapprove of some of the choices my dad is making, but if the phone rings and he says he needs me, I'll be on the next plane.

So I just profoundly do not get parents who don't support their children.

As soon as I write that sentence, I start to nuance it. I've seen the tragedy of parents who were unable to support their children through no fault of their own; I realize that the ability to get on a plane and rescue a child presumes a certain financial capacity; I know there are plenty of parents who don't support their children; I think of a relative who was a junkie and how the rest of the family begged her parents to stop supporting her.

But that relative actually puts my point into sharper focus. We wanted her parents to stop giving her money because she was spending the money on drugs; we never wanted them to stop loving her. When she called me up and told me she was marrying her boyfriend in the judge's office because that was the only way they could have conjugal visits once he was sentenced and went to prison, I tried my damndest to talk her out of it. I called her mother, even though I'd promised not to. I desperately researched prison policies. But then, when she refused to budge, I put on a nice dress, bought her a bouquet of flowers, drove her to court, met the boyfriend in his orange jumpsuit, watched the guard take off the handcuffs, witnessed the marriage, and took her out to lunch, while he went back to his cell. There were lots of things I wouldn't do for her, but this I could do, so I did.

I don't know how I got to this relative--I planned to write about a dear friend who died of AIDS in 1992 (M is named after him, in part), and how devastating it was to watch him try and try again to make contact with his parents, and then finally accept the fact that to them he was already dead, and his friends were now his family.

Perhaps there are things my children could do that would make me stop loving and supporting them, but, honestly, I can't imagine what they would be. I don't know how I would respond if they committed terrible crimes; I'm sure I would condemn the crimes, but I would think that in that situation they would need me to love them even more, and I hope that I would. But to abandon my own daughter because she dated another girl? That is just inconceivable to me, and so so tragic.