I just read a wonderful first novel by a great new writer (Losing Charlotte by Heather Clay) that triggered so many thoughts and feelings for me. It was about a family whose grown daughter died in childbirth. The family related to their daughter/sister as she had been as a child. While the husband of the dead woman, knew her as the adult woman/mother to be she had become and been. And of course those two people (in one body) were both so different and yet the same. As we all are. Hopefully we are a composite blend of all the stages (childhood, adolescence and adult) as we have grown to the adults we are today. And continue to grow and change our entire lives.
It triggers thoughts about my own family of origin. How my father has tried to keep my self and my sisters dependent on him and his wisdom, yet also has seemed derogatory of us if we took advantage of what he offered or if we didn’t. It has always been a no win situation. And more about him and his needs than ours. He has always resented our husbands and in some ways our children. He has continued to demand his place as NO.1 in our lives. And it makes me wonder if I seem that way to my grown children.
No one will ever understand (if they even do then) until they have children of their own and feel that bone deep need to love and protect this tiny being they have created. That feeling never goes away, even when your own children become parents themselves.
And they (the children) won’t understand THAT feeling until they become grandparents or even just parents of adult children who no longer need you because they now have their own family or spouse, who of course moves ahead in line of priority of you.
It is as it should be, as you know in your head that you have always been moving/growing toward this day. Raising your child to be a person of independence, love and integrity who can go out into the world and be whole. But as you are moving through every day of your life, loving them, nurturing them, they are growing away from you. You go from being the most important person in their lives to way down the priority list, though they always remain Number One with you. Which is as it is meant to be as time moves us on.
Life is all about growing, changing, and evolving. Giving, letting go.
Even as we know our child as an adult, part of us still holds on to the person they were as an infant, a toddler, a shy grade schooler, wild teen etc. We may love them, think we know them still, but we don’t know the person they are with their spouse on a daily basis, the parent they are to their child in every minute of every day, the friend they are. And that their priority is now their new family. The family they have created apart from you, their parent.
I remember vividly my first taste of this change. We had taken our newly married daughter and her fresh faced husband to the airport the day after their wedding where they would fly away across the ocean on their honeymoon. They were grateful to us for all we had done and hugged and kissed us goodbye. But as I wiped away my tears I watched my beautiful daughter who was now a wife, grab her husband’s hand, gaze happily into his eyes and gallop down the ramp excitedly, leaving us far behind, as in a time warp, in the past and out of mind.
This issue has so many facets I can’t begin to discuss them all here. It was just so obvious in this most beautifully written novel how parents of adults see their children in such a different light/reality so often from whom those now adults really are. It is always tinged by our view of them as children somewhat.
Now that all my children have spouses and some children and as proud as I am of them and what amazing parents/adults they have become, there is a small grief that only parents have known. When you know you would still lay down your life for your child and of course they would do the same for their own child. You as the parent have completed your job, for they have let go of you and moved on. You are no longer their first thought, their priority and that is as it should be. But so bitter sweet.
Which is why I have dogs who never grow up and happily lap up my entire extra love and attention!
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