What goes around comes around

 As a very shy little girl growing up in the 1960’s, I was fairly in awe of my mom and dad. They made me feel safe, even when just going to grade school felt like the most monumental feat. I doubted myself constantly. That I could fit in with the kids in my own grade, that I could handle the various studies at each level — being left-handed and therefore a true oddball to the Sisters who taught me back then sure didn’t help — that I could be successful following in just a micro step of the full and flourishing footsteps my older sister was conquering without the blink of an eye. It’s funny, though, how shyness doesn’t equate with not having a lot to say, that isn’t the case at all. I had lots of things on my mind back then, but lacked the belief that I was strong or smart enough to say them to anyone who didn’t also occupy a space alongside me in my brain. Because I was so unsure of myself I pretended to be sick a lot, so that I could stay in the safety zone…at home with my mom. I don’t think she appreciated that a good part of the time, she was a busy mom who of course had things to do and places to go, and having me at home certainly put a crimp in her plans. But for the most part she made the best of it, and I was so happy to be home with her, where I didn’t have to feel foolish if I said something a teacher or one of my peers might think was, well…dumb. But I also know that my mother didn’t really know how to figure out this “I’d rather stay at home” girl I was then. Especially when her eldest daughter couldn’t wait to get to school each day, excelled in every class and was a born leader ready to take charge in everything that came her way. I don’t think I was expected to completely follow suit. But to be the complete opposite of who they had come to know the first time around was still a surprise, and a concern. I can’t blame them. Quiet and anxious as I was, it all still posed a problem for them. How to get me to go to school, stay in school, and learn how to actually thrive there. My father, being a dad of the 60’s where men still closely followed the Father Knows Best of the 50’s, tried so hard to figure me out. Should he be patient, wait it out and see if my growing pains eventually eased into issues I could fix myself? Or should he take the bull by the horns and do the horrifically difficult job as a parent and force me to go to school on a day it was so clear I had no intention of going. He tried very hard for a long time with the first concept, because he had felt similar about school himself as a young boy, and could adapt my feelings to those he had himself, once upon a time. I didn’t know he had also faked illness as a kid to get out of going to school, and only learned as an adult that this particular DNA trait of his landed squarely and unhappily within me. Wise man that he was, he never divulged that information to me then, or it seems likely I would never have graduated from grammar school. In the end, he finally had to break his own heart as well as mine, and pull those bulls’ horns. I cried one morning as he lovingly but firmly (yes, you can actually achieve both at the same time) put me in the car, steeled himself as he quietly drove me to school…with me begging him between sobs to please let me stay home…and then, also quietly, said to me when we were there, “Either you can walk into school crying and looking silly, or you can dry your eyes and start your day.” I knew there was no going back home. I also knew, somewhere in the depths of me that was completely bummed he was right, that not looking the fool I already felt myself to be was the right thing, the only thing, to do. It was hard for me. I know now, because I am a parent, that it was probably even harder for him. He had to let my feet face the fire, and if it burned a little, or even a lot, it was still going to teach me in that difficult moment to be the person I am today, the person he so hoped for, and helped me, to be. Someone who can meet a challenge, as scary or difficult or heartbreaking as it may be, and see it through.

I loved my mother and looked to her for consolation and comfort throughout my childhood, and as I eased into womanhood. But I realize now, as a woman in her 60’s, that it was my amazing father who was the one who really “got me.” That’s what unconditional love can do, especially from parent to child, no matter how old that child gets. It gets sticky, though, because it can hurt so much when your older children sometimes make you feel that their own love comes with loads of conditions that make you wonder if they’ve missed what you’ve been working so hard to show them all along. I tremendously loved and respected my dad, and he knew that fact. But I still to this day so dearly wish I had not occasionally questioned his own for me when we, as normal kids and parents will do, butted heads. Do our own kids have to wait until we’re gone to understand that about us, or is there a way to make sure they know it now?

Do we parent our children the way we were parented, or wish we had been parented? I learned love from both my parents. But it is from my father that I learned the hard truth, and it can be, at times, excruciatingly hard, of what unconditional love really encompasses. Because he chose to put himself in my shoes, my brain, my anxieties — though they had, for the most part, been very different from his own — he also put himself in my heart, chose to understand me, warts and all, and loved me for who he knew, deep down, I truly was. He was firm but unfailingly kind. He encouraged, supported, sympathized and championed me in every way I could have possibly wanted and expected from a father, and never let me down.

I have triumphed many times as a mother, and I have also miserably failed too many times than I am happy with. But because I had a father who knew that parenting without unconditional love was not an option for him, it became something just as important and vital to me as I saw my children through childhood, and seek now, even as they are grown and gone, to let them know is still as deeply rooted as ever. At times they may think they don’t need it in the same way as when they were young. And it can be a real challenge for us, as well, to hold onto it as dearly as we do when they test us. But when we do meet the challenge, winning it goes such a long way in making all the difference.

Nurturer in Chief

 Nurturer in Chief

How do we go from being completely hands on with our children, to them wanting us now to be more hands off, while still trying to maintain a close relationship with them? And despite what they imply, or even flat out say to us in respect to minding our own business — “I can handle it all now, thank you” — do they always really mean it? Didn’t it take us all a while to finally understand the older child/parent dynamic, where at some point we had to admit to ourselves that our parents had it all dialed in a lot more than we were willing to give them credit for? Aren’t we just as guilty of the rolling eyes, c’mon dad or oh mother, please? We still need to tap into our younger selves as we grow older, hating to lose so much of ourselves to a time of life that is too much about additional medications, how do we have enough money to comfortably retire on, is that new ache nothing, or maybe really something? We remember, don’t we, what it’s like to finally be on our own and wanting to challenge ourselves, and even others, as to what our new roles as independent adults truly entails. You simply don’t understand MY generation, is what we would say to our parents who, unbeknownst to us, were actually smart enough to not only have a decent understanding of it, but had endured many generations of living, in addition to their own.

Perhaps the key we need to open the gate that leads us to understanding our adult children better is to remind ourselves of who we were at their ages, and stages. Truly walk in those flip flops, Earth shoes or Reeboks again and realize that they can be, at times, mirrors of who we were, or perhaps even who we wanted to be. We yearned to be marveled at back then, didn’t we? Our choices, our courage, our ability to move out and on with our lives without our parents’ constant input or feedback. They want that opportunity now themselves to be the ones who dazzle us with their independence, their choices, their own courage. And we know now, all too well, that it takes incredible courage to get up each day and face this challenging world. But it seems, in the midst of being their cheerleaders - because that’s what we’ve always been, always will be - that we need to occasionally be marveled at just as much in our own lives now. We need, at least once in a while, to be validated for our hard work and all that that has entailed, in loving them and doing for them more than we ever thought was possible. For seeing them through every joyful and heartbreaking moment of their lives that they will never believe, until they are parents themselves, impacted us a thousand times more than it did them. That the thoughts and concerns we share with them and for them now are not unenlightened, irrational or without merit. That we actually pay attention, from our own past to the present, to how this world spins us in all kinds of crazy directions. And if we lose our balance, as every one of us does, how to right ourselves, stick the landing, make improvements on the next elements, and then, with love and prudence, pass that knowledge along.

In other words, how do we help our children to continue to grow..when they are already grown? Step, ever so gently, on their shoes without ruining their shine? How do we freely let them go, and even celebrate their independence, while allowing them to also realize that we are the stable lifeline they can always reach out to, without them feeling that there is any disgrace in that, or any loss of their ability to conduct their own lives?

Realizing that it is so hard for everyone involved in this older parent older child dynamic is a start. We believe that we ourselves are firmly clued into this truth. The question is, how do we maintain our own balance as their loving parents while waiting for them to realize that they’re not the only ones feeling misunderstood, put upon, disregarded, or at times treated like a child? No one is a child in this scenario anymore. And therein lies the rub….

To get to the heart of where we are now — our desired goal being, how do we have the best relationship possible with our wonderful adult kids — is to go back. Way back.

And in the beginning there was our own parents…as parents. Let’s share our thoughts on how we feel we were parented, and how that perhaps influences us in how we go about parenting our own children.

The Fine Art of Mothering Adult Children

 The Fine Art of Mothering Adult Children (or, how I try to conquer post partum depression after menopause)

Rule #1: Give lifetime unconditional love

Rule #2: Don’t allow that love to be your total undoing

We know we love, cherish, and adore our children, and, if we’ve done it right, we also know that they love us back. We’ve seen them through every milestone, as well as our own with raising children. From the first bath with the first child where we were certain we would drown them, to colic, sleepless nights, endless scares of medical and emotional issues, all ages and stages, getting them to school, through school and all that that entailed to ensure that they had a better than average chance that they could not only succeed in this insane world we live in, but be able to be happy and thrive in it. As hard as it could be, there were also those amazing moments of pure grace, when our children threw their arms around our neck and nuzzled in as if that were the only safe place they would ever know. The early years of confiding in us their fears and joys, and actually looking at us like we must also be the smartest person they will ever know. The achievements, the heartbreaks, the letdowns and the triumphs…we lived all of those with them, for them, and in most cases a few moments were added or subtracted from our own lives because of them. Sometimes we thought the wonderful highs could get no higher, or we doubted that we’d be able to survive the lowest of the lows. But we did, because our love truly is unconditional, even when unconditionality is not always what we get in return.

So what do we do with these children that we have loved and raised and hoped and prayed for every minute of our own life since we knew they were to be…when they become our adult children? Is that mothering switch we didn’t necessarily know we had so firmly inside us until they switched it on, even before birth, one that can now be turned off as easily as they would sometimes like it to be? How do we always know the appropriate distance now, the right word to say at the right time (is there really ever a right time?). We suddenly feel like we must become the best juggler in the circus, or tightrope walker, or balance beamer. And depending on which way we turn, lean into, or fall, we can either be saved by the net or plunged into the abyss. We become gamblers playing Russian Roulette, with the risk of all parties getting hurt. Or we feel emboldened, at our own peril as times, to damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Because that’s what our mothering switch, despite the times we’d like to briefly turn it off ourselves, guides us to do. It stays on because it’s a connection we’ve made with our internal electric company, to keep the lights burning for as long as we’re here loving. But what we wish for now, with these amazing and wonderful adult miracles in our lives, is for them to understand our ampage, to respect our capacity, and allow us, here and there at least, to be the generators we’ve always been, even as we try so very hard to respect their want and need to navigate their own capacity.

What is our role moving forward as we try to figure out the rest of our own lives as adults? Parent, friend, confessor, mediator, emotional guide, lifeboat? To what extent are we those things, and more, to them? And when we are in need, who do WE go to?

Taking this journey together, and sharing our own stories can hopefully lead us to a better understanding of the role we want to play now as women, as moms, wives, friends, siblings…people on this earth who are trying to get it right, or at least as right as is humanly possible, without losing our own sense of selves, and ultimately, our own happiness and well being.

Our first topic together….Nurturer in Chief. Stay tuned.