Where's the Finish Line?

Did you ever get mad at your parents when you were a child?  I'm not just talking the standard teenage frustrations, but the pre-adolescent "Why are they say so mean to me?  They're so unfair!  I wish Tommy's parents were my Mom and Dad!  I'm going to go live with Grandma!"  I know I felt that way about my parents before I ever hit double digits.  After all, they were GROWNUPS!  If they were making me unhappy, it had to be because they wanted to.

I had an illuminating moment yesterday.  It occurred to me that when I was dealing with all that unhappiness and existential angst, my mother was 28, maybe 29 years old.  When I think about the person I was at 28 years old and how much I've grown over the years, I'm amazed.  And I realize that my mother was still growing at that age, too.

My mother was growing!  As she was an only child and I was the oldest, she was doing a lot of seat-of-the-pants learning about parenting.  But she was also learning about life herself.  And if she made some mistakes along the way in her parenting, I'm sure that she didn't do it intentionally -- she just needed to grow a little more.

The same could be said about the head-to-head battles we had in my teenage years.  The world of the late 60s/early 70s was nothing like she had ever experienced in her own life before.  How could she help me navigate a world that was unfamiliar to her?  How could she give me anything other than what she had learned, even if it didn't quite match the world I was living in, the people I was encountering?

A lot of us grow up with resentments about what our parents did and didn't do for us; some of it serious, some of it imagined.  Therapists are buying second houses on peoples' working through the hurts and misinformation they received from their parents, and I suspect most of those people believe, deep down inside, that it was done to them intentionally.  The truth is, that our parents were growing -- at least we hope they were.

We all know people who stopped growing when they were 20 or 34 or 42.  They stopped being introspective; they lost the desire to know more or be more.  But after I left home my mom went to work full time.  She learned to use a computer.  She travelled the world.  She painted a picture, a real picture suitable for framing.  For me to be angry about who she was (or who I thought she was on one day in our lives) is just plain silly.

Now, let this be said.  My mom and I have a good relationship.  We have certain subjects we don't go to, but we talk a lot about our lives, honestly and openly.  There was never any physical or emotional abuse in our home.  Did she make mistakes?  From my point of view, yes.    Do we love each other?  Yes. Did I make mistakes as a parent?  Dear Lord, yes.

I can only hope that my children will one day realize that I was learning as I went along, that some lessons I learned earlier and easier than others.  I can only hope that they will forgive me and be grateful that I gave them an example that being an adult human being is an on-going process.  You may enter adulthood, but if you are lucky, you don't reach the finish line until you draw your last breath.