The relationship with your parents

Friday 14th June

As a teenager I couldn’t wait to get away, to leave home and start a life on my own.  Whether this was something in the air at that time I am not sure, but a hell of a lot of people felt the same way.  Our parents didn’t understand the new generation, ‘The times they were a changin’ fast and revolution was in the air.

So, I ran away from home, and though there were eventual reconciliations I was determined never to go back home again.  I sort of blamed my parents for a lot of my own failings; they had always talked me down, they had never actually talked to me about life itself, they had never shown me any real love.  I would have a totally different relationship with my own children. And so there was a polite stand-off.  A few visits a year, Christmas and Birthday presents but no real connection.  I thought that was how it would always be. I didn’t want to get too close to them, and they didn’t seem too bothered about me.  Besides I always thought they preferred my sister to me, she was much more like them in many ways.

But slowly over the years things have changed.  I now phone them every week, regular as clockwork at 6.30 on a Sunday, far more regularly than my own children call me.  I am genuinely concerned if one of them is poorly, I realise that I don’t want to lose them.

And it is getting worse the older we all get.  For so many years I never thought about them, always too concerned with my own self-importance.  I didn’t attempt to hide my moods, but now I protect them, I only let them see a smiling happy me.  And I am terrified of losing them.  And why should this be, what has happened to make the difference from the selfish person I was to the now concerned son.  Simple, I grew up.  It might have taken me until my late fifties, but I guess I eventually grew up.