We had dinner with our younger son last night and it was relaxed and pleasant, at a restaurant we have loved for years. It's really nice when we see just one kid at a time, I think. Maybe, from his part, it's overwhelming to see both of us at once, I don't know. Having adult kids is a constant attempt at reinvention and sensitivity reinforcement. There don't seem to be any rules, and we're all respectfully tiptoeing in the dark. I love hearing about their work and lives, and yet mainly, it's just seeing them, being in their presence that is so wonderful. And that gives me a pang, because my parents didn't see their parents but once or maybe twice a year. They lived so far away, and it was not an era when people blithely took airplanes, and I know my mom missed her mother terribly, and then she died so young, when she was sixty. My dad's relationship with his parents was more problematic, but I could see plainly their pain at seldom seeing any of us and then for only a day or two. So I am blessed.
I've come to some funny state where I do feel at times in the presence of one or both of my parents, even though they've been dead twenty six years or more. They've come back to me. We don't speak, but it is unnecessary. I feel their love and pain and the utter complexity of their lives. I respect them fully now. Maybe a lot of us are careful not to look too hard at our parents' humanity when they are alive, but it gets us in the end. And teaches us to look at our kids fully, compassionately, and with respect.
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