You're Fired?

I know that one of the most difficult transitions in life is for a parent is to let their kid grow up and be an adult. I will have many memories of the battles in the house over our last child to leave. The reality is that someone in their 20’s is no longer a kid but yet because of our culture and inability to teach our kids how to be responsible, hard working and conscientious we have created a generation of co-dependent adults that truly expect mom or dad to give them everything on a silver platter.

We live by choice in an under resourced neighborhood. I drive by young adults daily who just hang out. They dropped out of high school because it didn’t work, they were expelled for fighting, bombed out or decided it was more fun to stay up all night and sleep till 2pm everyday. I have many grandmas who struggle with raising their grandkids and great grandkids because their adult kids are incapable of being a parent or just too lazy. My goal isn’t to create a dependence scenario where adults can find an easy hand out and continue in their purposeless existence but grow up and step up!

So I know that as I worked with Habitat for Humanity in the East Valley for 8 years that our goal, which is pie in the sky, would be to actually eliminate substandard housing. Much as I am dialoguing with one of my young adults, no longer a teen, about world hunger it would be great to say that it’s resolved and no one goes to bed at night hungry! Yet, the reality is that the food banks in Phoenix will have an ongoing crisis with the lack of food to distribute and the growing need of families living on less income as prices for food and gas increase.

I know that as a parent I don’t want to be fired from my life time vocation but want to transition from one of being a care taker, helper, assister and then friend sooner than later. Much as I have walked with my dad over the last 3 years with his transition from being independent to now being very dependent. One of the oddest things in my life happened yesterday. Usually in the past when I would visit my dad he would have this look on his face like you can’t leave me or please take me with you or help me escape. I walked into his new group home and he was sandwiched between two grandmas with the most amazing look on his face. He waved at me and said what are you doing here?

I ventured into my dad’s room to see how it looked? I watched the workmen in his bathroom continue to create a shower from the ground floor up. I talked with the owner of the group home and her special contractor friend. I walked back into the living area of the house to see my dad sitting at the large dinning room table eating his lunch. He looked as happy as a little kid getting his favorite snack or toy. As I walked away I sensed this sadness on my part. He really doesn’t need me in the same way because the group home has created a family environment. I was emotionally relieved. I had spent the last 3 months struggling for my dad after a stroke and two stays in the hospital. I was at the end of my emotional rope.

My real point of this story is in response to my man – Nate who wrote for me a paragraph about his present passion – world hunger. I am working with him to help him improve on his writing skills so he can get his GED. He is actually a great thinker but not as gifted in actually expressing himself with the pen. He says a few important things about world hunger and more so blasts people who just talk about statistics but don’t do anything. So I encouraged him to consider the why questions and then come up with some how to’s and asked him to do something local that would help stop his neighbors from going hungry and not create a dependency or a handout senario.

So the goal of doing community work is to see the neighborhood turn and become self-sustaining so as some guy that makes loads of cash off of saying, “You’re Fired”, I too can have this sense of not being needed in the same context. Unfortunately, I won't have cash off of seeing this grow but a better sense of accomplished that as Mastercard would say is priceless!