"I'm proud of you for the times you came in second, or third, or fourth, but what you did was the best you have ever done" Fred Rogers quote

“Are you proud of me?” little one asked.  How to answer.  Yes, so proud, no words to say how much, of course I am.  Of course?  As in aren’t all parents proud?  Well, no, I don’t think they all are.  But I am.  Proud as punch, as they say.  I like who my children have grown into, I like their ethics, their morals, their kindness to others.  I am proud of what they have achieved workwise, and socially.  Do we just feel pride by what we hold in esteem?  So if I value honesty and truth, am I only proud of those who are honest and truthful?  Maybe.  But if they lied and were still kind to others and still happy people I would still be proud.  

I wonder, sometimes, about other mothers.  Mothers of people we don’t like.  I was greatly moved to read that parents of a child who had been killed hugged the father of the killer as the father sobbed for what his son had done.  That is some forgiveness!  And what of the parents of Dictators, parents of bullies, parents of the journalists who have hacked into people’s phones, parents of drug traffickers.  Are they proud?  Do they have quiet proud memories when things were better? 

There is a quote I love, from John Lennon, talking of his son. He says;

“He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.”

And this is what I mean.  Are we proud of the things we helped to mould and create in our little ones, or are we proud of who they are, the humanity of them, what they do and say and feel?  I think it’s both, and the latter is the larger.