Growing Pains
“Am I a child or an adult?” he asks, uncertain where to go and
what to do in this new place. We’re in church and they are calling the children
to go to Sunday School. He’s a visitor today, so we’re navigating where he’ll
sit and what he’ll do while I sing in the choir.
It’s a fair question. He’s 13. Yesterday at the movies he was an
adult, according to the ticket prices. But today… what’s the answer to this boy
who is starting one of the first big transitions of his life?
In so many ways he is no longer a child. He’s had enough tough
life experiences to feel like a worldly adult. I know he sees himself that way,
more mature than other kids because of the struggles he’s been through. I also
see the kid in him when he delights in a new game, when his shyness overcomes
him in a new place, and when he shares naive ideas of the world that his brain
and heart are working so hard to understand. He still has so much to learn, so
much to experience.
Today, I tell him my answer in a way that his “trying-to-figure-out-the-world”
brain can understand “In this context, your a child. Go join the Sunday School
class.” I thought it best to give him a chance to be with some other kids, and
to not ask him to stay through the church service with the readings, sermon,
and prayers for the infirm. Better to
leave all of that serious stuff to those of us who have seen too many years
pass to even pretend to be children, although, truth be told, each of us here
in the sanctuary are both wise beyond our years, while holding stubbornly to
our child-self.
At least I am.
I’ve been thinking a lot about age and transition points lately.
My oldest daughter was married this summer and I wasn’t ready. I’m not old
enough, wise enough, whatever excuse I could muster to say I’m not ready to be
old enough to have children who are entering this bigger world of adulthood. I
remember their early forays from being a child to an adult. When my daughters
went off to college, I would get a phone call or text message from them proudly
pronouncing that they cooked a good meal, or unplugged a toilet - all by
themselves. I’d smile, the proud mother, with a sense of relief that I would
someday soon no longer be responsible for the day-to-day taking care of them. I
relished the freedom of no longer having them living with me. I picked up and
moved back to my growing-up home, added new activities and people and goals for
my own life.
That’s all still going great, but being the mother of the bride
threw me for a loop. There’s a sense now of no going back. Those days of being
that kind of mother are gone for good. As the mother of the bride, I helped out
as much as I could in the preparations, got dressed up and then stood on the
sidelines as she walked up and back down the aisle. She has now entered one of
the most profound transitions of her life, that will alter her forever. And
someday, she too will stand in the shoes
I’m wearing now. I promised her she would understand my reluctance then.
And I don’t even want to think about the idea of grandchildren
(that’s probably another essay for another day), but, really, what’s the right
answer when your child asks “What do you want your grandchildren to call
you?” Do other women fantasize about
this, dreamily writing their grandmother name over and over the way we wrote
our first name with the last name of our latest crush back when we were
young? If so, there’s another memo on
how to be the perfect mother that I must have missed. I have no idea what I want to be called. My
snide answer was “Is there something wrong with the name ‘Sue’?” - but I know
in my heart that I need to think of something and that choosing that name will
signal the start of yet another life altering transition.
Meanwhile, as I’ve been musing on my experiences as a mother and
the transitions women go through as they marry and bear children and allow them
to grow, the child-self is happy to be back in my consciousness. She’s decided
to play out some of the emotional habits that have been plaguing me for years.
My child-self messages remind me to keep in the shadows and not
call attention to myself. Something bad could happen if people noticed me.
Those messages match up nicely with my amazing ability to make
mistakes - say the wrong thing, send a newsletter to the wrong mailing list,
not be prepared for meetings, bring a
notebook and forget a pen, etc. etc. This can make for some tough internal
conversations and trigger old feelings of shame and guilt. That’s what’s been
happening for me this week, with a vengeance!
This morning in church, pondering transitions and looking out
over the adult/child-selves in the congregation it came to me. The child-self
will always be there. She will have her ways to respond to the unpleasant
things I create in my life.
She’ll also remind me that I can still be young at heart even if
someone is calling me a grandmother name; that I will always be my daughter’s
mother even if her life changes; that the love my husband and I have together
can be fun and joyful for the rest of our lives, and that I am who I am and
have years of experience in taking care of the mistakes I make.
Growing pains - they just never stop..
Sue McLeod
August 2016
