"Mommy, look!!"

I heard a very young voice speak that phrase yesterday and was struck by how some of us never really outgrow the impulse to share things with our parents, hoping they will be just as thrilled as we feel. My parents have now been gone for a few years, but whenever something new and good happens in my professional or personal life, I still start to reach for the phone to call them.

And then I started hoping that each of my kids will feel that way too as they continue their journeys through adulthood. I don’t need to be the first phone call they make, but I hope I’m the kind of mother and mentor that rewards those calls with encouragement and shared excitement. That may seem like stating the obvious – doesn’t every parent react that way? Uh… no.

As I grew older, there seemed to be more areas of my life that my parents simply did not “get.” Even if I had good news, I couldn’t share it with them because, at best, they would look confused. At worst, they would question why I was even involved in the activity in the first place. And their questioning had less to do with genuine curiosity than with poorly-veiled criticism about those things that are so important to me. Volunteerism comes to mind… philanthropy…. and anything connected with faith. My mom had religion, my dad had no faith until his final years, and my version of faith was simply a foreign concept which they did not try to understand.

I never really got used to that. I accepted that my extrovert mother would never understand my introvertedness. Why, yes, I do realize that’s not a word. At least it wasn’t before now. :) And I knew neither of them saw the fun in playing with words – or teddy bears. That was okay. Not being able to talk to them about my most important values was not okay. I sometimes feel that way with my adult kids, but I still invite them to enter my world now and then. I guess I'm either more courageous or less inhibited than I used to be; I stopped offering my parents those tentative, shy invitations long before I hit my thirties.

I was sure they would be excited when I announced my plans to go to graduate school. After all, education was just about their highest value. My mom was pleased, mostly because she had her own ideas of what I would do with the degree. My dad was more cautious. He shocked me by telling me it was not a good idea for a wife to be more educated than her husband. I had never heard him speak a single sexist word before! He meant well, but this was a traumatic moment for me – shaking the foundation of my understanding of who my father was.

I suppose parents and adult children will rarely, if ever, share identical sets of values. To be able to encourage each other even in the places where our journeys diverge: that is love. And it is grace. I guess this ability is one of the things I would like to be remembered for – by my kids, my friends, my siblings, my husband, my colleagues, my clients, my students…. Please keep inviting me into your world, even if my response is sometimes less than what you had hoped for.