I was sitting across from my mother at a small chop house somewhere on the mainland, not doing anything particularly important, just eating and half talking, when she said something offhand about a decision she regretted from when she was younger. Something personal. Something that had nothing to do with me or our family.And for the first time in my life i looked at her not as my mother but just as a person.
A full human being who had her own fears before i existed. Her own confusion. Her own version of figuring life out without a manual.It sounds obvious when you say it out loud. Of course your parents are people. But knowing it in your head and actually feeling it are two completely different things.
Most of us grow up with our parents cast in very specific roles in our minds. The authority. The provider. The one who was supposed to have answers. And because that role is so fixed, it is almost shocking when you see behind it.My father was not always confident the way he appeared when i was growing up.
I found that out slowly, through conversations that only became possible once i stopped being a child looking up and started being an adult looking across. He had doubts. Made decisions from fear more than wisdom sometimes. Carried things he never told anyone about because the role of father did not seem to have space for that kind of honesty.Understanding this did not make me love my parents less.
It actually made something between us soften. Because i stopped expecting them to be the perfect version of the role i had assigned them and started just knowing them as people who were doing their best with what they had and what they knew.Most of us are walking around with unresolved feelings toward parents who were simply human beings navigating their own incomplete lives while raising us at the same time.That does not excuse everything. But it explains more than most of us are willing to sit with honestly.
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