When I was growing up, I thought “While you’re up” was my father’s name for me.
He sat. A lot. He sat so much that he got a new recliner every few years or so. I got the box.
I loved getting those boxes. I could make a house out of them, and did. I would drag the box down under the porch where the dog sheltered. I cut out windows and I drew in art on the walls. I spent as much time in that box as I was allowed. When I wasn’t in school or in bed, I was there. Until the box rotted from the exposure to the elements, that was my home away from home.
The more I think about my childhood, the more I understand why I escaped so much.
But I digress.
My Dad would sit in that recliner, staring at the TV, seemingly waiting for me to get up so he could ask me to get something for him. More coffee. Wash his glasses. A snack. Whatever. He never did any of these things for himself. He didn’t even know how to put a band-aid on himself.
How he managed to survive to adulthood escapes me.
Meanwhile he gained more and more weight, and smoked more and more cigarettes.
He said “while you’re up” until the day I stood my ground. I’d sprained my ankle, and was hopping around. Everywhere I went, I hopped. I was a teenager by this point, so I’d had a few years of getting used to this phrase.
I wanted a glass of lemonade, and I had sat for quite a while figuring out how I could get it from the kitchen to the living room with a minimum of mess. Once I decided on getting half a cup, and in a plastic cup, not a glass, I was set. Then I thought about it a little more.
I braced myself. I knew, deep down, like how the shore knows the tide will come in, that my father would say those inevitable words, those fateful words. I knew all the way down to my core that he would be totally oblivious to the fact that I couldn’t walk and everything was that much harder. I knew that he wouldn’t say “Oh, let me help you – what do you need?” That makes me laugh just thinking about that. I would have known that aliens had possessed my Dad if he had said that.
I prepared for that eventuality with the same planning I’d used to figure out how I was going to get a glass of lemonade while hopping.
I got up. Payoff. He said it. “While you’re up…”
And I let him have it. I let him know about how insensitive he was. I let him know that he could very well get up and get his own whatever-it-was. I probably put in something about how it would do him some good to get up and move every now and then.
He never asked me again.
Yes, children should respect their parents. But parents also need to respect their children, and teach them through their actions about self-respect and discipline and fortitude. Sure, there is a Commandment saying that children should honor their mother and father. But there is also Jesus saying that we need to love each other. There is nothing loving about using your child as a servant. There is nothing loving about expecting someone else to do everything for you.
In fact, being an enabler isn’t being loving at all.
betsybeadhead 
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