I Know You

Thinking back on my recent experience with my son who didn’t think I “got” him, I am reminded of how we are all works in progress. As recently as last Spring he was not at all a fan of certain parties. Boy-girl parties. “They sit around in each other’s basements and text. Each other.” he’d complain. “It’s stupid.” Well, that opinion has changed some in the intervening months. And it has been accompanied by a sense of irritation that he is somehow constrained by an outdated image of himself.

This makes me think of the upcoming holiday season and something I sometimes experience when we join with family to celebrate. To spend this time with loved ones, participating in longstanding traditions, feels familiar and comforting to me. I love our inside jokes and our shorthands. I love our shared history and the depth of relationships carved out over a lifetime.

But at the same time I can feel constrained and diminished by an outdated image of me that my family clings to. It is frustrating to find myself locked into some one dimensional version of myself, circa 1983, when I was a bossy older sister, an uncertain follower, and a bit of a slob. These traits no longer characterize me, but they still seem to haunt me at family gatherings. They are the basis for a lot of stale jokes. And it makes me feel a little bit like my son, who has evolved socially but still feels locked, by me, into a grade school version of himself.

And so I struggle with this yin and the yang of relationships. The comfort of the familiar and known vs. the space to grow and the desire to be recognized as the people we have become and are becoming. Or, rather, I struggle with how to integrate this dichotomy. In our fast-paced, transient, and often superficial world it is a comfort and a bit of a relief, to know that there are people we have a real history with and a handle on, quirks and all.

But to be truly soul satisfying, it seems that relationships must make space for, and celebrate, growth. Even as they revel in the familiar. And this can take us to uncomfortable places. In a world with so many uncertainties to navigate, can’t we just settle into the familiar and not have to work so hard? Can’t we go on autopilot somewhere? We can and many of us do, but it seems that in doing so we run the risk of reducing the people closest to us to clichés, or caricatures of themselves. Pale imitations of the interesting people we could know.

Consciously making space to acknowledge and appreciate continual evolution seems like an especially important job with teenagers. While we are all works in progress, change in the teen years seems to proceed at warp speed. There is a lot of test driving, from friends to clothes to interests. Some of which seem to turn on a dime (which is why we have taken a hard line against tattoos around here, those suckers are permanent). I sense in my kids a deep desire to be seen for who they are, even though this is a moving target. Perhaps especially because it is a moving target.

If I hope to be credible with my children, if I expect to hold any sway or be further invited in to their lives, then seeing who they are, not who they were, or what I fear they might become, or who I wish them to be, seems to lie at the heart of this.

Our willingness as parents to take the time and effort to keep abreast of our children’s evolving selves provides tangible proof to them that they are worth knowing. And isn’t that something that we all want? To be seen, to be known, to be “gotten”. Family offers a wonderful opportunity for this. Let’s not send the signal to our kids that they have to head elsewhere for this validation. Instead let’s join them on the journey. It may just be that they'll want to get to know us, too.