Column on seeing a child in adulthood

I just saw our eldest daughter in Champaign Thursday evening. She is giving a presentation at a conference at the university. For a parent, that is a source of both pride and astonishment.

One of the things we chatted about surprised me. She started pushing me for memories and information about Watergate. So often, schools do not get close to current times in U. S. history, so that is a sort of hazy, gray area for her. As usual, I gave her what our children call a Dad answer, far too detailed and far too long.

I also enjoyed seeing that what I said for her infancy still holds true; I swear her mind works like mine, but she has her mother’s interests. Now she seems more of mix, where she combines our interests and approach to issues and interests. She likes movies as I do, but she continues her mother’s more literary bent in her reading. She continues to be religious. Unlike the stereotype, she disdains contemporary church music and liturgy and seeks the grandeur, tradition, and stability of more established forms. To quote her, “I can see less than average rock bands with insipid lyrics any day of the week.”

She is now at the stage where she can regard her parents with some objectivity and realize that their particular pasts have helped mold them into the annoying people they are. Teenagers get alienated from their parents and see them as obstacles.
They are keenly aware of their faults. Now she is starting to see her parents in full. As she said, only recently is she I even becoming aware of what she termed the “social capital” of educationally oriented parents. On the other hand, she bears the scars of feeling that she did not quite measure up to impossible standards. She inherited her mother’s concerns about weight and being in shape, again, against impossible standards for beauty and fitness.

It is both edifying and alarming to realize that one of your children is already much more accomplished, insightful, and intelligent than either of her parents. OK, I will be charitable, more so than I. Just recently, we made a scholarship decision for Rotary. The young people are bright and socially aware. I would have been happy if any number of them received an award.  I have some much faith in the capacity of so many young people today. They are parlaying their advantages into a socially conscious, acute look at both their individual lives and society at large. Plus, she and her husband are good with money. They are so much more sophisticated in dealing with money and investments. They live simply, even frugally.  I had no clue about the sorts of short-term and long-term tactics.

I was also interested that contemporary academia is more of a seedbed for ideas from the left than it was when I was in school. If colleges were liberal a generation ago, much of their template for analysis has moved to a decidedly leftist critique of the powers that be and a near adulation on f minority viewpoints as sacrosanct.

It’s always hard to say goodbye. I recall vividly my realization that first steps are often away from a parent. We say that we wish our children will think for themselves, be independent. I often say that being a parent is like being locked in a time tunnel. Even as we see them mature, our memory flashes back to infancy. How is it possible that one’s child is a mature adult?  A piece of you misses that dependence, even as one celebrates independence. A larger piece stands back in wonder at the adult a child has become.