Pass the Dessert

Last month, my daughter-in-law started a family blog in which she chronicles the day-to-day events of her life while raising two of my grandsons (one is almost three; the other is almost one). It’s a marvelous window into the joy and challenges of raising young children. It also serves as a rearview mirror to the days when my kids’ mother and I were doing the same thing. Reading her journal entries stirs some wonderful memories and warm emotions, as well as a little melancholy about the passage of time.

But, I’m in another rewarding phase of my life now – a time when I get to enjoy adult relationships with my grown children. Each of those relationships is still developing and each one is quite different because each is a unique reflection of where a given child is in her or his life. I look forward to what awaits me on the horizon. Fortunately, nice encounters are already coming my way.

On Sunday I had a long and stimulating conversation with one of my sons regarding a HOTS posting. We disagreed on several points I had made, but the discussion was cool, calm and collected. Then, on Monday and Tuesday my wife and I had a great email exchange with one of my daughters on a fairly sensitive topic regarding family dynamics. Each of us truly benefited, because each of us kept the exchange cool, calm and collected. In each of these instances there was a readily apparent mutual respect, a nice sense of balance, and a shared willingness to listen and learn from one another.

Yesterday, my youngest son bought me lunch. I believe that’s the first time he’s done so (if I’ve forgotten an earlier time, I apologize). As an aside, he left a nice tip, slightly over 20% (reference “The “Biltmore” HOTS posting on March 23). Four of my six kids, appropriately the four oldest, have now bought the old man a nice meal or two. The two youngest will do so in due course, I’m sure. It’s a minor but nonetheless noteworthy milestone, one that speaks to emerging independence. It’s also a nice form of “Thanks, dad.”

Last month, my son-in-law picked up the tab for a large and not inexpensive birthday dinner for my daughter. As we all stood up to leave the restaurant, his step-dad and I turned to each other and had the same thought at the same time. We smiled at each other and simultaneously said, “It’s a great transition, isn’t it.” Indeed. It was like dessert.

There is great joy in raising young children. Being a meaningful part of their ongoing process of growth and discovery is about as good as life gets. But there’s also great joy in building adult relationships with the children we’ve raised. In many ways, that’s where the “payoff” is, if you will. For many parents the payoff comes in the form of certain classic milestones, such as college graduation, career accomplishment, some other successful achievement, marriage, and the birth of grandchildren. Those things matter, to be sure. But, for me, the most significant reward comes in the ongoing emergence of meaningful and substantive relationships with children who have become decent, caring, contributing people and in seeing that my children remain committed to a lifetime of learning, because that portends a lifetime of continued growth and development for them. If you feel like you’ve helped get your children rolling on their chosen paths, it’s nice to see that they’re still gathering momentum as they continue along those paths. Who doesn’t like to see their past energy and effort still being manifest where it matters the most.

Don’t get me wrong: grandchildren certainly get rung up in the reward column, too. That’s a special relationship in its own right, but it rarely becomes as profound as the parent-child relationship. Grandchild are just darn good fun; and when the day comes that they stop being darn good fun, that’s when you turn to your kids and say, “Good luck with that. By the way, when are you buying lunch, again?”

I’ve said before that more than anything else I want peace for my children. When I come away from a fulfilling encounter with one of my children and I feel peaceful about it, then I’m very pleased because I know that I just got that sense of peacefulness through them and thus I know that there is peace in them.

That’s dessert.