Miki Dedijer

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Becoming a family servant

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In a few days, a dozen or so men are gathering at our farm around a man about to become a father.

So I’ve spent some time pondering what this moment asks of us, now that his life seems to be taking him away from a certain singularity awash in endless possibilities, towards an obligation to be tethered to the bundle of ties that is family.

Now there’s a word, family, pregnant with hidden meaning, fully birthed only by a willingness to wonder some about its ancestry.

Family, from the latin famulus, is originally an adjective meaning servile, or a noun signifying a servant or slave. We may receive this as a negative, this posture of submission, but I suspect that there’s more to it then what the knee’s jerk suggests. As the verb famulur, it indicates someone who ministers, tends to or waits upon someone or something.

And so there is an action concealed within the pale lifelessness of the noun, something being done that is of consequence to the one being acted upon.

The servant here is not a single person submitting to the will and command of others of higher standing. Nor does it ask of us that we resign ourselves to tending to the whole without recompense, agreeing to become gradually impoverished by our  ministrations, forever bound to an insatiable hunger.

When we first tread across the threshold of parenthood, we’re not entering the vaguely heroic realm of sacrifice, rising every day to lay our gifts down at the altar of the child. Not as I understand it. It’s more relational than that, less ridden with resignation.

It seems that as you become a parent, you take on a relational obligation and mutual agreement to serve whatever and whoever needs sustenance. Not sacrifice. Surrender.

For this man coming to our farm, his heart expectant, this may be his pregnant partner. It most certainly will be their newborn child. At times a grandmother or uncle and others of the fold. The family requires the attention of all members onto all members. It ceases to be without this collective willingness to serve.

And in entering this web of relations with the stance of a servant, we soon discover that it extends far beyond our child, our partner, ourselves. For what sustains us, is serving us, is family.

So I wonder if family is only born from our willingness to bow our backs and kneel together in servitude to all that calls on us for nurturance. As a man then, we marry into family by a pledging our allegiance to matrimony, the condition of the mother. This is the honor bestowed on the one entering wedlock, to become a servant, not master, in the household of life, human or otherwise.

Our children are not exempt from this daily practice of family-making.  They too are asked to learn this willingness generously to serve, so that they may one day come of age, knowing that beyond the immediate family, there’s a larger community fed by their willingness to give what they are able to part with, and some of what they relucantly know they must give up for life to continue.

Attachment beyond mom and dad

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Attachment theory places a child’s sense of belonging at the breast of the mother, or in the lap of the father.

But we’re all born with a need for attachment to a home that is far vaster than the nuclear family.

Imagine instead an attachment theory that knows the pain of being uprooted and adrift, and so honors the child’s need to be intimate with the place to which she’s born. This acknowledges the need of every child to plant her little being in a wild home of familiar forests, streams and constellations.

Envision a theory that bows deeply to the ancestors who breathed your child into life, and can speak at length about the devastating poverty of holding but a few drops of one’s rich bloodline.

See the theory stretch to also wrap around your child’ need for attachment to community, a diverse social ecology in which to develop all of her gifts.  Here the theory acknowledges the ills of isolation and fragmentation, and grows its reach outwards, to the embrace of an extended family and a thriving village.

As it is, you and I may rate ourselves as securely attached in theory, yet feel curiously homeless. Well if you do, it’s of little surprise. To truly come home, our children–and ourselves–must attach to all of life.

You are not a father, not a mother

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You are not a father or a mother.

You are not a carpenter or a yoga teacher or a gardener.

You are not a role-player, a work-title, a position or a label.

You’re a spider. A fool. A rain drop. You are a nebula. A becoming. A being. A part of a greater whole.

Easy to forget when you’re on your belly looking for a lost sock under a dusty bed.

But important to remember for the health of your family.

When we confine ourselves to a role or define ourselves by the position we hold in a family, we exclude all else that brings us joy, insight, expansiveness, vitality.

When we see ourselves primarily as mothers or fathers, we too easily forget all the many other ways we adventure through life, all the many other ways we relate.

Confined to a parental role, we become rigid, inflexible, limited and quite likely grumpy and disgruntled.

Our child notices, watches and learns from us not what it is to be a parent, but what our ways are saying about being an adult human.

So for the sake of your child, for your family, for yourself, don’t lay yourself down at the mercy of parenthood.

Offer yourself the space to be fully human–create a home where you see yourself, your child, your partner not as a fixed position but personhood in a flux.

Feel the excitement, the curiosity, the possibilities in a family beyond roles. Just for one day, go a bit crazy and try something surprising that is beyond reasonable or the clearly sensible.

Loosen up your fixed positions and stale habits, by switching roles and trading chores. If you’re a father call yourself a mother. If you’re a mother, call yourself a father. Disolve wherever you’ve become stuck in your respective tasks, expectations and everyday patterns.

Make it a fun day full of playfulness and serious insights.

 

Ask your child for help to find the time to parent

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I was supporting a father the other week, and after an intense, surprising and creative session with some out-of-the-box prescriptions for change, he paused and in a slow voice he said, “I just need to find the time for this.”

I immediately asked: “Where will you look?” He paused a long time before conceding that he didn’t know where to find that additional morsel of time that would make all the difference to his family life.

We all labour under the curious burden of not having enough time. It’s the one thing in our lives that seems to get heavier the less of it we seem to have. It might be better that we do away with it all together. We could collapse the future, the past and the present into the now.

Sounds unrealistic, naive, weird? Then take a moment and look to your child for some magic.

Our children are constantly asking us to come to them–be with them–to settle into the now. In so many creative ways they appeal to us to slow down, to play, to discover, to wonder at the mystery of it all. Our children seem to have all the time in the world. It seems they know where to find it.

You too can turn the tide on time, and snuggle up to a new narrative. Here’s one radical way: Make yourself a fine clock out of cardboard, with paper hands to set the hours and minutes. Place it prominently in your kitchen or hallway.

The next time your child asks you to do something together, and you hear yourself say that you don’t have the time, create some magic. Turn the minute hand back 10 minutes, no more.

And then this: during those ten minutes, see and do everything as if it’s the first time. Even better, do something for the first time ever. It doesn’t matter how odd it might seem. Never worn a potted plant on your head? This is the time to try it. Ever danced naked with your child to loud music? Now is the time.

When we seek out newness, our world slows down.

Do this, or something else that’s radically new for you, and you’ll suddenly find some of the time you thought was lost forever.

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