Echoes of the past

One of the more frustrating things about being a parent is learning just how little control you really have. Despite your best laid plans, there are just going to be things you can't change. This is especially true when it involves your children.

We do our best to mold our kids. We'd like for them to learn from our mistakes and live their lives without the hard lessons we might have picked up along the way. Despite our best efforts, our children are actually unique human beings on their own. While they may have at least 50% of our genes, there are no guarantees that they will approach issues in the same way that we would. Or, for that matter, the way that our spouses would!

It's a minor frustration, but it's there all the same. In private, our boys are lively and imaginative. They are playful and rather creative in their conversations. All of that flair seems to disappear the moment we introduce others into the equation. They are generally polite (although your interpretation may vary depending on when you catch them), but they are a shell of their normal selves. It's rare to get more than a handful of words out of them--and each of them are given grudgingly along the way. This obstinate performance is especially infuriating when you are with your friends or family. You want to impress them with the bright, charming young men that you have dutifully raised. Instead, you get the sullen or withdrawn lumps that could be anyone's progeny.

And then the memory struck. Out of nowhere, I suddenly flashed back to a scene from my own childhood. It was my exasperated mother looking at me with sadness in her eyes. "Why don't you ever talk to your Aunt Phyllis?" She had expected me to be my bright, charming self with her sister and I had withdrawn into that pre-teen shell just like my boys are now doing.

Maybe they are learning from me after all. I guess the only saving grace is that they may yet evolve into more enlightened forms--later.