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I’ve been thinking a lot about parents lately. I think about my own parents, my friends’ parents, and the concept of parenthood in general. It’s interesting to me the infinitely diverse parent-child relationships there are. But what I’m finding most interesting right now is the parent relationship once you’ve grown up. How does that relationship change, and what are the turning points?
One of the most important stops on the journey to adulthood is a shift in your relationship with your parents. As a twenty-something, I’m finding a new way in which I relate to my parents. And I know I’m not alone. In conversations with friends, we share anecdotes about what our mom did or what our dad said. It’s clear that as we age, we start to see our parents differently. We see them as human beings, just like us. We start to finally understand them in a way that was impossible for most of our lives. We see them as imperfect, fallible people who have spent our lives just doing their best for us. And ideally, we are able to appreciate them for their best efforts, too.
In some cases our parents get sick and we see them differently. We no longer see the impossibly invincible being they once were. In other cases we start to see truths about our parents that have always been there but we couldn’t see before. In some cases we grow apart from our parents, unable to reconcile moral differences. We are, after all, adults now— just like them. We are capable of drawing our own conclusions about the world without their oversight or their guidance. And it turns out that sometimes even our parents can be loud and wrong.
When your mother spends the better part of a year battling cancer, you start to see less of the invincible Wonder Woman you’ve always known. You worry about her. You call and check on her. You ask her things you probably should’ve been asking all your life, like “how are you feeling today?” Then, when she beats cancer, you start to see her as invincible in a different way. Not invincible like a comic book hero, but invincible in a way only human beings can be. Malleable, adaptable, healable, and tough. This change can feel scary, but it can also empower you as a listener and a caretaker. And allows your parent to feel comfortable relying on you and trusting you in a new way.
When you notice symptoms of mental illness in yourself that are the same things you’ve seen in your father growing up, you realize he has always been human. You always thought those behaviors were just eccentricities, but as it turns out, you might share a common struggle. Your father is still your father, but he is also someone else now. Someone who you can maybe understand and empathize with a little more. Or maybe just someone who needs help. And you are now in a position to offer help, if he’ll take it.
When your parents are too far gone on YouTube conspiracies or their Facebook feed has become devoted to something you can’t forgive, you start to see how your life has taken it’s own course as you’ve grown up. Maybe you moved away, or met different kinds of people. Whatever it is, you and your parents no longer see eye-to-eye on issues that you both are passionate about. And though that can be frustrating for both of you, it opens the door for you to examine your own beliefs and stand by them, or reevaluate.
The unimaginable heartbreak of losing a parent is not something I can speak on from experience, but I take comfort in the thought that our parents live on through us in the things they’ve given us. They give us lessons and cautionary tales. They give us our taste in music, or our accents. They give us family stories, and recipes. They give us their eyes, their smile, their nose. They give us things that stick with us. This may not always seem like a good thing, but I am a person who tries to view the world objectively. We learn and grow simply through the experience of living. And the things about our parents that we’ve come to love or hate inform our worldview regardless of what those things might be.
Sometimes, I find myself wanting my parents’ opinion of something, only to find that what I’m actually after is permission. That is something that, nowadays, only I can give myself. Sometimes I find myself wanting to tell my parents about everything I’m buying at Target or projects I’m planning on the house, or what I’m working on just to gauge if I’m doing adulthood right. But, I think the best kept secret in the world is that no one knows how to do it right. Even parents.
We all just learn as we go, informed by our unique experiences, by the changing winds arounds us, and by what our parents gave us. We are who we are because they are who they are.