Vinceland

My parents had seven of us LaVecchias. John, Emy, Mike, Catherine, Betsy, Vin, Nick. Unbelievably, all of us went through private high schools and some form of 4 year college all without incurring our own loans. I can’t even imagine what that would cost if we started putting children through college today. Indefinite debt (on top of our current debt!).

Besides our formal education, our parents had to deal with all of the other essentials for a great life: shelter, food, clothing, vehicles, snowboarding. We ate nearly every complete meal together, at home. Dinners were around a large table, full course meals with meat, potatoes and veg, sometimes even dessert. (Can’t you tell!?) I remember my mom telling us once that at one point, she was going through 2 gallons of milk…a day.

Imagine the food costs per month! Imagine shopping each day, restocking the kitchen, preparing meals, cleaning up, doing it all over again, for 25 years. Imagine this on top of dealing with 7 kids at all different stages of development, with different needs. Imagine my dad being the single income for the entire family for over 30 years. Could not be done today.

I have the utmost respect for what my parents did. I am in awe of it actually, as we contemplate the idea of having children, like so many of our friends have. I think the monumental challenges my parents dealt with successfully (we all ended up ok…) make our generation look like wimps with our 2.3 children per household. I know there are other challenges to face with rearing children today, but the sheer volume of work to handle 7 children is daunting enough to render the idea ridiculous for people today.

I am not sure if this is the place to discuss my thoughts about becoming a father in detail, but I will offer some general notions that have been mulling through my mind of late. First, I am turning 33 in a few weeks. My career has tossed and turned a few times, but seems to be on a path now, albeit one with more twists to come for sure. I just got married, and I’m still getting used to the greatness of that. I want to be married for a while, I wanna get a house, do some stuff.

We’ll be in debt, with the house, cars and other things, for a number of years. I guess this is just the state of society that we’ll never outrun. Banks are loaning more money, in more ways than ever. It seems like a yearly salary goes nowhere towards fulfilling one’s needs these days. But maybe the problem is that we have more needs. Or do we have more expensive needs?

Either way, finance and age are the burning questions when it comes to thoughts of trying to continue in my father’s footsteps of being a great dad. I am not worried about anything else, yet. I think we can somehow handle bringing up children to be well-adjusted, (great term) successful, cool kids. I’m just not sure when I can to handle it.

The problem now becomes one of timing. We’ve got some time, just not a lot. So what’s interesting about that is the pressure not only comes from friends, family or within, but the ever tightening pressure of the clock. Damned machine! Damned everlasting element of human existence!

Time is the only thing that’s constantly taken away from us by no one, but ourselves. You use it, it’s gone. You don’t know how much you have to use. You don’t even know how much other people have to use. You don’t even realize how fast it’s going away, most of the time. Time is the worst thing, ever. There’s no way to get more of it, from any one. You can’t buy it, borrow it, or take it from someone else. Time sucks.

But time is the only thing that matters more to me now than ever. It’s more important to make the right decisions, because time seems more precious now that it’s shared. I decided to share it with one other person, and now we’re supposed to give the gift of time to a child. If we choose not to give the gift of time, are we wasting it?

I realized the other day, that one route to eternal life on earth is to become a father. Leave yourself behind and pass it on, hopefully forever. But at what cost?