Learning to Be - Terry Fenwick

Learning to Be  

Story . . . one day I was at the market in Half Moon Bay.  I was rushing around the aisles, looking for something quickly for a Thanksgiving dinner and without a cart.  I whipped around the corner and nearly ran into two little twins, barely walking, and a mother and father with a cart, trying to keep the children busy while they were trying to shop.  I stopped . . . took a deep breath because I wanted so much to tell the mother I had twins and survived and maybe just say hello . . . but, too busy!  Aren't we all? 

So, as God would have it, my car was parked next to hers! When I came back to my car from another place in the shopping area, she was just arriving with her groceries and her husband was "sort of helping" load the car with groceries and children. The boys were so cute and they were in their little car seats. The mother was totally harried! Totally.

I smiled and got her eye  . . . and told her I had had twins about 45 years ago and I am still living to tell the story. She sighed and said "they" are so busy! She commented about how they get into everything. I laughed and told her that we had many other children but I remember "my" twin days. She said it is so hard to be a mother of two. I laughed, she sighed.

Then I told her that they were just babies, "learning to be" children. I told her they are not suppose to know how to be little boys . . .  yet. We are in a process of "learning to be" and it is the same for all of us. I told her one day they would "learn to be" little boys, then they would "learn to be" teenage boys, and then they would "learn to be" young men, and then they would "learn to be married men" and then "learn to be" fathers.   I told her we are born not knowing "anything" and life is all "learning to be!"

Then, I told her that she was "learning to be a mother" and she was not expected to know it all. She laughed . . . she liked that. She leaned against her car and laughed. Then I said, "Do you know what I am learning to be? I am learning to be a grandmother."

I mentioned that we should not miss the joy and the suffering of it all.  We never stop "learning to be."

And me? I am learning to be the wife and loveress of a 75 year old balding man and he is learning to be the husband and lover of a 69 (almost 70) year old woman, with wrinkles and extra flesh.

End of story . . .

Will we ever learn? Love to you, Terry

Pope John Paul II in his Letter to Women says:  When the Book of Genesis speaks of "help", it is not referring merely to acting, but also to being. Womanhood and manhood are complementary not only from the physical and psychological points of view, but also from the ontological. It is only through the duality of the "masculine" and the "feminine" that the "human" finds full realization.