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This is an unusual edition of Uncertain Parenting. Normally this newsletter explores moments when my life informs my approach to parenting, but this edition examines the inverse -- when lessons learned in parenting informs other parts of my life.
HE'LL NEVER WALK ALONE
My husband is a lifelong, die-hard Everton Football fan. For the uninitiated (and American) that means he supports a soccer team from his hometown in Liverpool, England that is perennially mediocre. Their subpar performances are particularly painful in contrast to their hometown rivals, Liverpool Football Club, who are likely going to win the league this year, again. Think of Everton as the perpetually crap Mets, while the superstar Liverpool are akin to the New York Yankees.
Not only is Everton far worse than mediocre this year, more like diabolically awful, but they are also facing the most English of all sporting realities — relegation — which means that if they finish the season in the bottom three of all the teams in the English Premier League (currently a very real possibility) then they are sent down to a lower league.
In America, everyone is a winner, right? Well in England, they are happy to watch you suffer and face the sports-equivalent of being sent to the dunce chair in shame, subjecting you to the humiliation of being banished from the league. There are a five more games left for Everton to be released from this unbearable purgatory, and the question is: will they win enough games to survive relegation or will they live in ignominy and be demoted?
Being an Everton fan is my husband's inheritance from his grandfather and his father, laden with memory and meaning, a yoke he has passed down to our own children. As I watch him suffer through every game as he (and I pray) that his team will come out relatively unscathed from this agony-filled journey, I feel powerless to shield him from the pain of seeing his beloved inheritance tarnished. And it hit me that the powerlessness I feel is painfully akin to parenting my kids in their hardest moments.
- I can only observe his pain from the sidelines.
- I can’t fix it for him, for good or for bad.
- It’s truly out of my control — no amount of love can make it better.
- I know life will be OK in the end, but my heart still breaks for him.
Observing my husband scream at the TV in frustration, pace the family room in anxiety, or silently cry at the end of a match, transports me to all the times where life felt uncertain, unfair and unhappy for my kids. In these moments, particularly as they got older, all I could do was watch — tests they bombed; games they sat on the bench; unrequited loves that broke their hearts; parties they weren’t invited to; leadership positions they didn’t win. All of the things that we as parents pray will work out for our kids while knowing full well, it’s out of our hands.
So in these final weeks of the English Premier League while Everton’s fate hangs in the balance, I am borrowing a few of my hard-earned parenting lessons and applying them to best support my husband as he faces a potentially devastating outcome:
- While we wait for the next games to play out, I will draw from a COVID era piece I wrote about “waiting well” which based on outside research advised: stay optimistic for as long as possible, hoping for the best possible outcome to mitigate the physical and emotional impacts of uncertainty.
- If the worst happens and Everton gets relegated, I will not tell my husband to look on the bright side nor will I minimize his sadness. I will listen quietly as he rails against the injustice of it all, offering neither empty platitudes nor false reassurances.
- In the hardest moments ahead, when Everton potentially draws closer to the gut-wrenching possibility of being sent down, an event my husband has never witnessed in his lifetime, I will keep him company in his grief. I will hold him as he cries.
I now gird my loins and garner all my hard-earned wisdom gained from caring for my kids over the past two decades in order to support my husband in his time of uncertainty. Mostly, I just want him to know, as I have told my kids every day of their lives, I am forever by his side, in victory and defeat. To masochistically borrow a favorite lyric sung by rival Liverpool fans at every game, I will make sure my husband knows he’ll “never walk alone."
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