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Personally, a few that were dear to my heart had also gone through some heartbroken situations involving their sons. To a greater or lesser degree, their pain in those situations was very much part of my emotional journey too. Therefore, I understood very well why some women had a negative opinion about sons.
A man had been a good son to his own parents. He was generous and kind towards his relatives too. He had two sons. He loved them with all his heart. Both of his sons were very intelligent. They grew up to be quite successful. One became a millionaire who owned many businesses. The other son had a good career and was financially secure. The man was very proud of his sons. In his later years, he helped in one of his son's businesses. His son did not pay him any money, and he thought it was alright since he was helping his son. He grew old and got sick. His sons (and their families) did not want the responsibility of taking care of him, and each said it should be the other son's responsibility. One day, they got into a big fight (argument) in front of other relatives over a small bill for the care of their father. Most relatives watched in disbelief and sadness. Fortunately, a loving relative took him in and took care of him until he moved on.
A loving, kind, and gentle woman saw her son falling in love with a young woman who had shown signs of extreme jealousy. When the son was voted the vice-president of a social organization, his girlfriend asked him to resign because she did not want any other woman around him. To please her, he resigned. She was even jealous of the female secretary that his company had hired to work with him. During their courtship, the girlfriend threw a fit all the time. The son's family often heard him talking on the phone for hours to smooth her anger. They saw the problem in their relationship, but the son could neither see nor accept what others saw in his girlfriend for he was madly in love. The mother loved her son. She knew there was nothing she could do except to pray for him.
The son got married. Soon his wife told him that she could not stand him loving anybody else including his mother and his side of the family. He began disconnecting from his mother and family. When asked, he told them what his wife said. In the last year of the woman's life, the son visited her briefly (behind his wife's back) once every four to five weeks. The visits only added to the mother's sadness. She was sad to see that her son did not look well. He seemed to have a lot on his mind, and his unkempt appearance was a big difference from how he used to look.
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As human beings, most of us were happy when we heard or saw good things happening to good people; we felt sad when things turned out the other way. I was sad that these painful situations happened to two loving people that I loved.
However, as much as I was pained by what happened to the father and the mother in the above cases, I did not come out of these experiences with a negative view towards sons. It might be I had an uncle (a son) who had shown much love and respect for his parents. My maternal grandfather lived to almost a hundred years old. He lost his eyesight to cataract in his late 60 s or early 70 s. Throughout the years, my uncle, his wife, and their children lovingly took care of him. They set up their home in a way that was easy for Grandfather to get around. A few years after Grandfather moved on, they opened their home again to my oldest uncle who was sick and confined to a wheelchair. My uncle, the youngest of his siblings, was a wonderful, loving brother to my mother too.
There were many men (sons) loved and took care of their parents liked my uncle. Every situation in life was unique. We should not form a discriminating view based on gender or discriminate any group / culture simply because of what we saw, heard, and experienced.
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Some years before I met my husband, there was a news story that made me think about the relationship between a husband and a wife.
A popular TV news anchor asked his wife for a divorce because he had fallen in love with another woman. His wife broke down in front of the reporters. She told them she had cut all ties with her own family because her husband had demanded her to. She said she was very much alone during the years they were married for he did not want her to have friends. Meanwhile, her husband hung out with his friends as he pleased. She cried that she now had nobody to turn to since she had allowed him to rule her life.
With fame and money, the TV news anchor saw himself much more superior than his wife. He said he had provided her a good life (from the materialistic point of view!), but she had not met his expectation. I thought a man and a woman in a marriage should regard each other as equal. In fact, I had always regarded everybody as equal. I wondered how the wife could cut the ties with her family simply because her husband demanded her to. If ever I got married, I would never blindly obey my husband or manipulate his relationship with his family, I thought to myself.
The story of the jealous wife happened years later. The controlling nature of the news anchor was in a way similar to that of the jealous wife. His wife (a daughter of a family) that cut all ties with her family must have brought much pain to her family just as the son did to his side of the family.
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Were daughters better than sons as the waitress concluded? Should we love our sons more or our daughters more?
As parents, we should love our children fairly and equally with no regard to the gender. Favoritism caused conflicts, separation, pain, hate, anger, suffering, and disharmony in a family. (Please view my post Favoritism and the repeat of a cycle that caused pain and hurt ) "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is a golden rule in life. Sometimes it helped to put ourselves in other people's shoes to get a better understanding of a problem or what the other was going through. For example, while treating her son unfairly, the waitress suddenly thought, "What if I am him! How would I feel?" There might have been a change in the mother and son relationship.
The waitress said her son often complained that she loved his sisters more than him. I hope the waitress realized the pain and confusion she had inflicted upon the boy before it was too late.
~ to be continued ~
Link to my next post A talk among girls about the criteria of an Ideal husband
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