The Talmud teaches, "A parent's love is for his or her children; the children's love is for their own children." (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah, 49a) Are we really comfortable with the notion that our children will pay our love forward? Doesn't this concept evoke every parent's fear of eventual irrelevance and relegation to the crumbling world of the past?
A beautiful story tells of a bird who crosses a windy sea with each of it's three children. One by one, the first two children beg of the father bird not to drop them to their deaths. "Only deliver me to safety and when you are old I shall do everything you ask of me!" they implore. The first two fledgling birds fall to their deaths. Only the third is carried across the sea to safety. Her words to her father are, "My dear father, it is true you are struggling mightily and risking your life in my behalf, and I shall be wrong not to repay you when you are old, but I cannot bind myself. This, though, I can promise: when I am grown up and have children of my own, I shall do as much for them as you have done for me." (taken from Glueckel of Hameln (1645-1724) Memoirs).
Glueckel of Hameln was the mother of twelve children. She completed her memoirs at the behest of her children.
