Credit

A while ago I read a small article in the Carolina Parent magazine called Top 10 Reasons to Love Being a Parent. One item resonated with me:

4. Getting credit for divine work.
When people meet my son, they almost always comment on his eyes. "What beautiful blue eyes he has," they sing. Then they look at my eyes and say "Oh, he got his blue eyes from you!" At which point I reply, in a deep and not-so-humble voice, "Why, yes, thank you." And it always strikes me that I'm taking credit for something I had absolutely nothing to do with. I had no control over my own eye color, and I certainly didn't hand-select the pigment for my son's eyes. I guess that's just one of the perks of being a parent. So, go ahead, take the credit!

I realize this truth as Sonya gets older and older and we receive more and more compliments. So who takes credit for all those things people compliment our daughter on; Sonya's smile, her fair attitude, her laugh? Well, clearly anything physically manifest is not from the will of either Lisa or myself - not even her long hair. Sonya's affability & other personality traits are also likewise (while desired) not anything we created by our will. I wish I could take credit for her laugh, but I can't.

But in a few years, this baby will become a child with a cultivated personality. Maybe then we can claim to have helped to create who Sonya will eventually become. Maybe even not until many more years haves passed. I don't know when we can really claim to have a hand in who Sonya will become, but I do know it is farfrom now.

The notion of taking credit reminded me of my wife's favorite quote, from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Reading this quote with parenting in mind, I smile. If raising Sonya is the "arena", we will be "marred by dust and sweat and blood", striving "in a worthy cause" with neither "victory nor defeat" as an option.