Through The Eyes Of Love

My father had cataract surgery last month. On his second eye. My mother had both her lenses replaced a couple of years ago. The milky film that descended over their vision from years of exposure to sunlight is gone. With artificial implants, they see more clearly. Through the magic of modern medicine, nothing gets past them anymore.

I am their only child. Sometimes I wonder if they see me as clearly as they see the rest of the world. I am far from perfect, yet it is often difficult to convince them, now, that I am old enough to have accumulated a fair share of mistakes.

They were strict parents. Sometimes I chafed under the weight of their expectancy. Most often, I messed up out of ignorance. I was rarely downright bad. I didn’t always understand why they punished me. Later, in my rebellious teens and often angry, I stopped listening to parental reproaches and punishment was no longer effective. I was a wild girl then, but Mom and Dad seem to have forgotten those years.

The world I lived in as a child does not exist anymore. Progress has all but wiped out the inflexible morality of the past. My parents are still firmly rooted in its traditional soil and a part of me reaches back to it, even as I spent my youth fleeing its uncompromising severity. Solid, ancient Europe, which changed only little over the centuries, hovered over my childhood. Life divided into right and wrong and good and evil and my mother was a staunch advocate of that way of life. Today, she is not so rigid anymore.

What is the magic that turns parents into our most ardent supporters when we outgrow our childhood? What force transforms their vision to see us as no one else does? As one who will always succeed, whose struggles are worthwhile and who can ultimately do no wrong? I have not heard a harsh word from Mom or Dad in years, yet I’m sure they would have plenty to lecture me about. After two failed marriages and years of financial struggles, I still have little to show for.

While their eyes see more clearly now, their hearts seem to have acquired a loving blindness when it comes to my shortcomings. I’m not complaining. I’m grateful for the support and recognition. And it makes me humble. I pray that no ambitious scientist discovers a treatment or surgery to make them suddenly see reality.

My parents gave me a standard, by which to measure myself. Now that I am older, they no longer hold me to such rigid principles. The acceptance I always struggled to obtain, they now grant me readily. May they always look at me through the eyes of love, and may that vision always be a just a little dimmer than my own…