Parents Are People Too

It’s funny that we spend most of our teenage years trying to make our parents realize that we are no longer the kids they taught to ride bikes and build sandcastles. We spend years trying to show them we are adults, that we can make our own decisions thank you and we don’t need any help from you.

Except we do. It takes some of us longer than others to come crawling back, looking for everything from hugs after a breakup to a place to live after being laid off. When I’m upset the first person I call is my mom – something I would never have done 7 years ago when the last thing I wanted to tell her was why my high school boyfriend made me cry. Now I go to her with cooking questions, boy advice, job searches, and Bachelor gossip. And the more I talk to her, the more I’ve realized that she’s not just as mom. She’s a real person too.

That may seem stupid. It’s not like I didn’t know she was human, it’s just that when you are younger your parents are indestructible people with the keys to the car and money for college. You see them live their lives, but you take everything for granted. Just close your eyes for a minute and think back to high school….how often did you think about what they did during their days at work, or what they were doing while you were at a party with your first love? Even my friends who had ridiculously close relationships with their parents really only talked about their own lives with their mom or dad – I can’t think of a single person who sat down and really listened to hopes, fears and dreams of a parent when they were 16.

Recently I’ve talked with my mom and discovered a completely different person than who I lived the majority of my life with. The most surprising thing that I’ve learned? She’s just like me. Now I knew some things, like I knew she loves to travel and cook, but now I see her going out with girlfriends and starting to date again. She calls friends to go out to lunch, goes next door for coffee and game nights, and gossips over email with friends. Sometimes when I call her I catch her out shopping, or about to go to the gym. Sound familiar? When she didn’t have to chauffer me to gymnastics or ballet lessons, it turns out she is interested in other things in life but me. It just occurred to me how selfish I had been.

She’s now dating and it’s fun to hear her talk about it. She is just like me – throwing herself into new relationships and meeting his friends right away. I’ve always made a point of seeing if I fit in with a boyfriend’s friends and if he fit in with mine. She is cooking for him, I do that too, and she is exploring new restaurants, one of my favorite relationship activities. When I stopped seeing her world through mom-colored glasses, I realized she enjoys the same things I do. The woman I thought would absolutely never ever understand anything about me (circa age 16) probably understands much more than I’ll ever know. She lived a huge life before me and holy wow, it’s exciting.

I found out she dated a guy with a motorcycle, and she rode on it. She once sailed the Greek Isles with a guy and dumped him the moment they got back to dry land. She was married long before she had me, and there’s still an unknown story there about why she hates skiing. She went to beach parties. She was there for the Kent State shootings. She remembers when JFK was shot and saw Jerry Garcia perform live. I am just a character introduced in a later chapter of her life – I like to think a very exciting chapter – and now she is starting to write a new one.

I’m not sure where I read it, but I saw something recently about activities to do in your 20’s. One of the things on the list was get to know your parents as real people. Remove yourself from the equation, and perhaps even their spouses. Talk to them about married life before kids, about life before marriage, and perhaps even their own first heartbreaks. While they get to see us grow up and experience a million new things, we hardly ever seem to know the back-story of our own roots. Don’t wait until it’s too late to get to you know parents as real people. You might be pleasantly surprised.