It is true I have lost it. Not my mind, just my ability to control my mothering habit. I know you are twenty-seven and twenty-eight. I know you are married. I know you have jobs and responsibilities. Did I say I know you are married? I know you walk through the world everyday looking like an adult to everyone. Really, you even look like an adult to me, but in my heart you are my child; not that you ARE a child or childish. You are my evolutionary child, and in my memory I see you walk through the years, growing and changing into your adult selves. Everyone else sees only the final product, but my heart-sight is a timeline of love and investment.
I try so hard to follow my eyes and not my heart, to give you adult standing and room for your own ideas, likes and dislikes, tastes, and preferences. I try to suppress the urge to push that unruly piece of hair down, tell you to brush your teeth if I think you forgot, remind you to stand up straight, be polite and watch your tone with each other, or take your elbows off the table and use good manners. I know you are self-sufficient and learned all these lessons long ago, but sometimes I just lose control of my motherhood and feel the need to give a tune-up. Good habits die hard.
I will admit it is (I am) annoying at times like these. I even annoy myself because tiptoeing over the edge of the parenting perimeter is painful. Do you know how hard it is to give up the All Access Pass when your kids ripen into adults? At twenty-seven, I went on high alert and have trained myself to give all to the cause, and now I am in forced parenting retirement and must stand-down. (Don't nobody need no parenting?)
Here is the kicker, I have recently discovered, through my Advanced Studies in Human Development course, that I am at the age of transference in which I feel the need to impart gained wisdom and experience. That explains it: it isn't just unrequited parenting love that is the issue, I am staging. How comforting.
So, when your dad and I give opinions or share thoughts, and you say, "You sound like old people," in shock, I wonder if I am suppose to be embarrassed by my age? I am stunned to find I am - I didn't know that was happening! I suddenly feel ashamed that time dragged me over an invisible hump when I wasn't looking, and I mentally pat myself down to check: no, I don't feel old. Maybe the expired parenthood license does that to you?
Should you be embarrassed to be young people with your own opinions and thoughts and less experience? If I point that out will I make you prickly, and will I end what could be a deep discussion of legitimate issues with different viewpoints. It is new parenting territory, fraught with pitfalls and new verbal challenges. So, adult children, pay attention. We all have a challenge to meet in the middle. Your dad and I must move backwards toward you, and you must move forward toward us until we find level ground where our history of love and commitment to family is the fertile ground upon which we remodel our relationship.
About losing it. I still may. My mothering may escape my hands and lips from time to time. Your dad's fathering may escape in the form of a tone or a look. Advice or inquiry may slip out unsolicited and prickle or irritate. Just chalk it up to our "imparting" stage of life. When your stages show up, we will give you the same allowance. Know this: love covers a multitude of (st)ages.
