“Have you heard from the kids today?”
“Yes. They’re still safe. Fire crews are holding the line north of the 210.”
“Thank God.”
CarolAnn and I still refer to our children as “the kids,” though they range in age from 44 to 48.
I recently mentioned our oldest son, saying he was “pushing 50.” It gave me a jolt as I suddenly remembered a phone call I got from my father on my 50th birthday. We had a lovely conversation. He said, “When your kid turns 50, you really feel old.”
Dad died from his only heart attack just a few months later. I was still his kid.
A friend recently mentioned that I often write about aging. Well, we write what we know and those things that demand our attention, yes? I’m very lucky. I’m in my 70s, in good health, and exceptionally happy now that I’m retired and have time to enjoy my life in detailed moments, past and present.
There are five parenting stages based on your kids’ ages: infancy, childhood, teens, transition to adulthood, and the final stage, their fully independent lives. Each stage is a unique emotional time for Mom and Dad. For the kids, it’s just growing up.
My mother died five years ago when she was 87. I was 68. To the end, she still called me “Honey”.
As a parent, you try to remember the stages of your own life: your earliest years in grade school, learning to socialize, crying because you were scared or just didn’t understand. Hugs, soothing words, and kissing boo-boos often help.
The teen years are an explosion of insight and confusion thrown into a hormonal blender. Parents have to remember that and deal with it on those terms.
The transition stage is the hardest on parents. It’s when your kid moves out of your home with a hug, a smile, and a wave and walks away into their own world without you. As you wake up each morning without looking in on them, fixing their breakfast, or issuing loving reminders to start their day, you gradually understand that your little boy or girl no longer exists and never will again.
That’s hard. And while you continue to love them and celebrate their lives, you’ll never fully recover from letting go.
Until she died, my mom always told me she loved me. Dad was a Wyoming cowboy born nearly a hundred years ago. He said it, too, just not as often.
Now that I have a kid pushing 50, I tell him and his brother every chance I get. I’m telling them, and their own sons, right here and now:
I love you kids with all of my life.
