He tells me he is feeling so much better now….
NEWSFLASH – I never even knew he was feeling badly! (Though I worried he might be.)
My son, the clam.
I think one of the biggest fallacies I ever fell into about having children was that it would get easier as they grew up. I didn’t understand that I would wonder and worry about them even as adults. In some ways, the ‘worrying’ is more challenging than when they were young, because they no longer live at home. I don’t get the reality check of ‘seeing’ them – and I can create all sorts of imaginative scary stories in my head.
In my experience, they’ll
- 1) tell me nothing and leave me wondering
- 2) let me know something tough AFTERWARDS, and make me cringe with regret about what I didn’t know/didn’t offer support for, or
- 3) tell me something tough while it is happening and basically hand the ugly problem to me, leaving me ‘fixing’ it in my mind, looking at it from all angles, when in actuality they already feel so much better simply by telling me. They have dropped the problem with me, much like a ‘relay race’ – I am worrying and stewing and they have moved past the whole thing.
Has this ever happened to you?
This has sent me musing about time itself…we are living in different time zones, lol. They are present in something which will be my future. Or, their past is now my present.
What time is it, really? What is time?
Oh, I can so relate to your slice. So many times they share something with me or my husband, and we worry and wait for a follow-up that never comes. Just like that everything is better – except they forget to tell us that. Then there is the balancing act of knowing how much advice to give or not. You are so right – we never stop worrying!
Thank you! Yes, it’s a whole new world of stress with adult children, lol. Very different from their younger days.
I love how you shift from a specific moment with your son to reflecting on parenting adult children in general, to even bigger questions of time. I also love the simile of adult children passing off their problems like a baton in a relay race–it feels like a perfect description.
Thank you! I’ve had conversations with friends who have had this same experience – a long, tough conversation on the phone, for example, and you – the parent – stew on it for days, only to hear it is a not a problem the next time that you speak to your child…oh my.