I’m reading a  novel called Outline by Rachel Cusk, and the narrator at one point is talking about what she might say to her child:

“There was no such thing as an unblemished childhood, though people will do everything they can to convince you otherwise. There was no such thing as a life without pain. And as for the divorce, even if you lived like a saint you would still experience all the same losses, however much you tried to explain them away. I could weep just to think that I’ll never see you again as you were at the age of six – I would give anything, she said, to meet that six-year-old one more time. But everything falls away, try as you might to stop it.  And for whatever returns to you, be grateful.”

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We all damage our children, a famous pediatrician told me that when I was producing a television show. But in different ways, he said. You have to understand that all children are damaged, they are all raised by people, and none of us are perfect. No one ever tells us that beforehand, so we are often wracked with guilt and confusion about the kind of parents we were and are.

I know that what he told me was true. Some children get smudged, some are cracked, some are shattered into many small pieces, they can spent their whole lives trying to put the pieces back together. They all are hurt in some way.

I never quite understood parenting through that perspective, although I see now that it is true. My wife and I wanted to do it perfectly, our wish for our daughter was that she be unblemished, protected from life,  that she not be scratched or shattered in any way. Like so many people of our generation, we had arrogance but little wisdom, we did not know that there was no such thing as an unblemished child, or that we all damage our children in one way or the other.

Because the holidays are so much about memory and nostalgia and expectations, I think many people – at least people like me – feel the drama of childhood the most intensely. Old memories come roaring up, the holidays can be so charged and intense, whether you are the child or the parent.

I should say I am a lucky father, my daughter is successful and healthy and happy and living her own life happily and far from me and with love and meaning. I don’t know how any parent can really wish for more than that.

Still, one of the curses of life is that we often can’t accept our own limitations, and we have too little respect for the power and nature of life itself. We sometimes thing we are bigger than life, we can shape the flow of it. We all do the best we can, but we do not always know that the best we can is only sometimes good enough.  I think that is the tragedy of the Boomers. Buddhists know better. They understand that suffering is, in many ways, life itself.

How frightening and difficult it is to think we can be perfect, raise a human being perfectly, spare them the pain and loss and awful beauty of life. It is an awful responsibility in so many ways.

I also could seep that I will never see my daughter again as she was at age of six, I also would give anything to meet that six-year-old one more time, pick her up, swing her around, listen to her shriek with laughter and joy.

Hey, I would say. I can love you always, but I can’t spare you from life. I am not that powerful or wise. I will protect you as best I can, guide you as faithfully as I am able, but life offers the miracle of independence, of self-reliance. You are the one who can guide and protect you the best, I am a flickering candle along the way.

If it wasn’t divorce, it would be something else.

When you look back, I hope you can see me as a loving and safe presence in your life, a place to anchor, to drink from the cup of love and understanding. I trust you will one day see that I did not know as much then, as I know now.  When I set off to find myself, I was never leaving you, you were with me every step of the way, with every beat of my heart.

And that is the mystical part of wisdom, we acquire it by needing it, not having it. I hope I helped you heal from the wounds of life, from the wounds of me, I hope you understand that I could not keep them from you.

There is no such thing as an unblemished childhood, there is no such thing as an unblemished parent.

Everything falls away. For whatever returns, I am grateful.