Hello, parents of adult children. How you doing? Things are so much easier now than when your kids were little, right?
Yeah, I know. Kind of yes, but also very much no. Things are easier because you’re not constantly fixing snacks and breaking up fights and soothing them through night terrors. But they’re also so harder because . . . well, if you know, you know.
It’s easier because your children are adults, and they make their own choices, and they don’t depend on you for every little thing. It’s also harder because your children are adults, and they make their own choices, and you don’t always get to pick which things they depend on you for.
They’re big and they have cars and bank accounts and relationships and politics and worldviews of their own, but also they are still your children, and they are still, in some ways, what you made them to be. It’s still personal. It will always be personal.
This is not going to be a ‘parenting as death march’ essay where I lament over the unceasing agony of it all, or where I beamoan the lives my older kids are living, and then tell you how I’m managing to soldier on in spite of the pain.
Actually, I think my adult kids are neat. Wonderful, even. Like every human being I know, all of them are struggling with various things, but all of them are also succeeding in various ways, and I’m proud of them all, and I like being with them.
They’re good people, and interesting beyond words. And yes, it’s a relief that they can all pour their own dang milk! Sometimes they even run to the store to get milk for me.
Sometimes I think about how, when my husband and I first became parents, we were still more or less kids ourselves. We had a lot of growing up to do, and that meant our parenting was sorely lacking in many ways. Then I think about how that’s still true.
Now firmly middle-aged, with seven kids who have reached adulthood, we’re still growing up. Knowing that makes it much easier to be at peace with our undeniable flaws, because now I know that when growing and learning ends, that is death.
In life, all human processes are in flux. Nothing that matters is static. Learning, love, trust, dependence, guilt, pride, memory, attachment, you name it, all of these states of being are constantly shifting, developing, waxing and waning, transforming. This is normal, and isn’t supposed to have an expiration date of 18 years.
I know this because my relationship with my parents is still a work in progress, and they are both quite dead. I’m still learning new things about them, some that make me furious, some that make me groan with pity. I’m revisiting what I already knew, and I’m still moulding and kneading the memories I have of being in their care.
I’m still working on that strange, comic balancing routine of trying to give my kids what my parents gave me, but also spare my kids what my parents did to me, all while missing them, all while breathing a little sigh of relief that they are gone.
The years my kids spent under our roof didn’t feel like they were flying by at the time, but still, they flew. The time of actively raising your kids is very, very brief. Whether that idea brings you panic or relief, here’s a thought I return to again and again:
Most of your relationship with your children happens when they are adults. … Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Photo by irelyn via Flickr (Creative Commons)
