Our grown up kids

A lot of us retirees and older workers have grown children. Some of us are fortunate to have them living in the near-by community so we get to see them often. Two of my three children live thousands of miles away. We get together several times a year.

Adult children often have no idea what their parents are thinking or feeling. It was a seamless thing to segue into adulthood; the parents will always be the same. But we aren't! We are changing, maybe even more radically than they are.

A few years ago, my husband had major surgery for prostate cancer in a city far away from here. I had no idea at the time how hard this would be for me to do alone. On the day after the surgery I knew I needed help. Two of my kids were unavailable, but our middle son dropped his work and family obligations, not easy, and came down to help me. He was wonderfully supportive in every way and only left to return to his work and family when it was clear that we could manage. I will always be thankful to him.

This same son came for a week to say good-bye to his dying grandmother. He sat by her bedside, heard her stories, made closure. His older brother had earlier spent many hours in the hospital with his grandmother. My daughter met me when I flew east with my mother's body, in the town where my mother wanted to be buried. My daughter had arranged the rental car, the hotel, everything. I was exhausted after hours of funeral, jet lag, grief, rain. I remember the wet autumn leaves plastered to the pavement when we attended the burial.

These children of ours (for all of us), come through when it counts. On a daily, weekly, monthly basis, I wonder what they are thinking, or do they think about us at all? Are they at all interested in us as persons with interests, talents, lives? As parents, we all tell our kids what we are about. But sometimes I wonder what it would take for an adult child to ask, very simply, "Hey, Mom or Dad, what are you doing today?"

They take it for granted that we would tell them if we about to croak. They take it for granted that we love to have their children in our space. (We do!)

I try and think back on the times when we were in the same circumstances with our parents and I can't come up with anything positive. We did talk about our parents but I am not sure we let them know how much we cared about what they were doing. Maybe we didn't.

Having a daughter is certainly a corrective. We speak on the phone most days. We know what each other is doing. I rejoice in knowing her small son. But, like my sons, she never does ask me or her father what we found important to do this day.

I wish I could be a young adult again, knowing what I now do, so I could really truly ask my parents and my husband's parents, because I really cared, "Tell me, what are you dong now? What interests you?"