The Ties that Bind

I have parents. Good ones. Hardworking, decent people just trying to live their lives. Not perfect, but not dreadful either. I don't talk about them much because I have occasional ambivalent feelings. I have avoided talking about my parents because at some point I would like to feel safe enough to give the address to this blog and they could feasibly read everything that I've written. And while I am the token hippy in a family of rather staunch republicans, I have no desire whatsoever to alienate or injure my family.

That said, I read this today: "My parents, like a lot of people, successfully raised their child to be an adult they can't understand, in a city they find alarming, in a profession they find impenetrable" (Kadish, 81) and I thought. Wow. She perfectly explained my relationship with my parents.

My parents pushed us. Well, my Dad pushed us. My mom mostly loved us as much and as well as she could or we would let her. They haven't had an easy life. Hard work and lots of it. They genuinely wanted us to have a better or easier life than they had. So they pushed us. Pushed us to do well in school, to make good grades, to get an education, to work work work and to serve when required. The result (at least for me) is a bachelors degree with honors in a discipline incomprehensible to my parents, and a masters degree in the same subject. I used to go to great lengths to try to explain what I was studying and learning and reading and writing...and then I just gave up. I got tired. I guess I came to accept that I was just different from my parents. Not better or worse, just different.

I love my parents. But there are moments when that difference is a gaping maw, a conversational black hole, an untraversable no-man's land. I can't change who they are. I can't change who I am. I can't unlearn the things that have made me so different. And yet. I feel bad. Like I haven't loved them well enough. Like I'm not a good enough child. Not loyal enough. Not patient enough. Not tolerant enough.

I have moments when they're pushing my buttons (read: DAD) and I want to look at them and turn my heart off and simply say, "I am what you made me." Because I am. The workaholic, obsessive, driven, ambitious parts of my personality come from those years of being pushedpushedpushed to be betterbetterbetter than the next person. And yet. They are my parents.

I suppose it's an unresolvable problem with the universe...this tension between parents and the children that they've raised.