Monthly Essays

We All Change

The other day I was telling one of our sons that he could never know his parents because he met the responsible pay-the-bills, save-for-the-future, teach-your-children-well version of us. And yet at our core, we identified with the turbulent ‘60s when we were finding our way through high school and college. The Age of Aquarius and the Beatles, multiple assassinations, miniskirts, the draft lottery, hippies, Vietnam. When I listen to the music of that decade, it takes me back to a tumultuous, yet glorious, time in my life.

On the flip side, I don’t think I can truly know my sons as adults. This thought is based on anecdotal reasoning.

When Jim was a kid, he loved those marshmallow Peeps. In his adult years, his good-intentioned mom would bring him Peeps each Easter. He never told her he’d outgrown that sugary treat. A few days after Easter Sunday, we’d toss them in the trash.
I was working in Denver, when one Sunday evening my folks called. This was a time when long distance cost so much a minute, so we usually communicated by letter. The Wizard of Oz was on TV, and they wanted to be sure I knew it. I had loved that movie as a kid and watched it each time it was on. It didn’t have the same appeal when I was 24, but I thanked them profusely for calling to let me know. After I hung up the receiver, I did not turn on my used 15-inch black-and-white rabbit-eared set.
My friend Virginia’s husband always carved a jack-o’-lantern with his daughter, a tradition he believed she valued as much as he did. They were planning a three-hour drive to her college one October weekend, and he was packing a pumpkin and two carving knives when Virginia finally convinced him that maybe they could just paint a face on the pumpkin and avoid pumpkin guts and seeds in their daughter’s dorm room. I know for certain the daughter was thankful for her intervention.
My friend Ralph told me that he and his wife routinely attended their grandchildren’s sporting events. They carried lawn chairs and would sit with their son and daughter-in-law and their friends. One evening they were running late, walked up behind the group, and his son was talking and laughing with his friends and was more animated and quite a different person. “Of course, he was, “I said. “Didn’t you act differently when your folks were around?” We want to live up to our parents’ expectations. We can’t just be relaxed and be ourselves. I loved my parents dearly, but I felt freer to express myself when they weren’t around at an event.

My point is—people change with time. And yet, some parents see their children as they were when they lived at home and were a family with lots of noise, always hungry mouths, and needing rides to here and there. Adult sons and daughters see their parents as just that—parents. I’m sure to my sons, I’ve always been old. My parents were always old to me, and yet my mom was in her 40s when I got married. How young that seems now.

Of course, I wish I could ask my folks lots of questions about their youth, and maybe I should tell my boys who I was in my teens and 20s.

Hmmm. Maybe not.

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