When the day ends

[I'm sitting in a brilliantly sunny parking lot - Loblaws grocery. And, no, I'm not sure why that matters - and am waiting for my lovely wife to e-mail me the grocery list so I can pretend to hunt and forage in this most convoluted interpretation of the urban ideal. I've got a BlackBerry, some lovely tunes - Thirteen Senses...again not sure why that matters - an open sunroof and a riotously red maple tree swaying in the warm afternoon wind overhead. So I thought I'd write a bit with my thumbs and see what develops.]

Bedtime has always held a certain significance for me. As a child, it was an important moment of transition from busy day to quiet night, when I got to spend some much welcome alone time with my parents.

Of course, by the time I was able to dress and brush myself, they didn't actually need to tuck me in. But they did, anyway, because this represented the kind of parents they were. And it never got old for me. Knowing they were there was plenty enough for me, and it's one of those indelible memories of childhood that I carry with me to this day.

And so it is with my own kids. Our eldest, Zach, turns 15 tomorrow, yet I still need to kiss his head and hear his voice before he tucks in for the night. I can't miss watching my daughter perform her carefully planned rituals - books, stuffies, blankets, reading light, blindfolds... - and listen to her talk to the dog one last time before he follows me out. I have to watch our youngest son arrange one layer after another on his bed before he burrows himself inside, reaches his arms out from his cocoon and squeezes me around my neck for all I'm worth.

His tuck-ins are different in a subtle way, as he is our baby, just like I was to my parents. And I know that he'll likely be the last tuck-in I ever get to do. I hold onto this ritual because a part of me wants to believe that our kids will always need their omniscient, inviolable, all-powerful parents there for them. Even after the real world strips them - indeed, us - of their overt superhero persona.

Once upon a time, I had thought that my parents lost their superhero persona right around the time I hit my mid-teens and began to brashly take my first steps toward an independent life. it didn't take long for me to start questioning and challenging them. When my father first got sick 12 years ago, I remember looking at him in his hospital bed and wondering what had happened to my superhero, the man who blocked the light coming in from the hallway as he made his way into my room for tuck-in, who always held on to me just a little bit longer because, well, because he knew I needed that.

Illness made him seem smaller, no longer able to fill the doorway, to cast a shadow over me. But hindsight has taught me that the shadows he and my mother cast - then as now - were and are not only literal. Even though he's no longer with us, he's still defining that transition from day to night, helping me make those moments as memorable for my kids as he and my mother made them for me.

I never lost my superhero, after all.

I hope I learned these lessons well, and I hope I'm handing them off to the next generation as well as my parents transitioned them to me.

Your turn: Please share a lesson your parents taught you.