Ten Count 'em, Ten Uses for Parents

Even the most mature, competent, sane, and self-sufficient
grown-ups need their undeniably imperfect parents to perform some
functions no one else in their life can readily perform. Here are a few
uses for used parents:

1. Parents know you. The people who raised you know you in a way no
one else ever will. They know what is inside you and how it got there.
They know where you got every physical and emotional aspect of you,
however many dirty little pubertal secrets you tried to keep from them.
Even when you lie to them, you are probably more predictable and more
fathomable to your parents than you are to your best friend, or even your
husband or wife, because your parents came to know you before you started
to hide your real self from the rest of the world.

Having your parents accurately know you better than you want people
to know you can be humbling. It can cut through the bullshit quite
nicely. It doesn't always feel good to think of yourself as the child you
once were, but it may be a useful exercise. It especially helps if you
know that we're all faking our adulthood--even your parents and their
parents. Honest, you're not the only one. Beneath these adult
trappings--in our president, in our parents, in you and me--lurk the
emotions of a child. If we know that only about ourselves, we become
infantile; if we understand that about everybody, then we have nothing to
be ashamed of--unless, of course, we go around acting like a child and
expecting everyone else to act like grownups.

2. Parents keep the home fires burning. Your family are the folks
who are most likely to take you in no matter how low you've sunk. As long
as your parents are around and you are reasonably appreciative of them,
whatever happens to you and wherever they happen to be, you are likely to
have some place to return to. You can, if you must go, go home again.
Home may not be pleasant or comfortable, and it may not be physically
located where it was, but it is home, and you can risk a lot more in life
if you know there is a home to go back to.

The only danger of having parents who keep the home fires burning
is the temptation to collapse when the going gets rough and run back home
to hide, to go "home to Mama" rather than to face the cruelties of
living. But collapsing upon Mama and Daddy may be less destructive than
collapsing upon a therapist or affair partner at the turning points of
life.

3. Parents offer an open womb. More than anyone else in your life,
mothers, and sometimes fathers, can kiss it and make it well when their
grown children need to regress and repair. More than anyone else in your
life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can catch you when you start to
fall. When you are in disgrace, defeat, and despair, home may be the
safest place to hide. My mother, who was torn between wanting me to be
her baby at home at her breast and wanting me to go forth into the world
as her champion to fly her banner, could tolerate my frequent failures,
and could offer quite a flow of warm milk when I needed it; it was my
occasional successes that curdled her, as she feared I would be so
self-sufficient I wouldn't need her anymore.

Freud told us that "A man who has been the indisputable favorite of
his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of
success that often induces real success." Mother love has been maligned.
An overmothered boy may go through life expecting each new woman to love
him the way his mother did. Her love may make any other love seem
inadequate. But an unloved boy would be even more likely to idealize
love. I don't think it's possible for a mother or father to love a child
too much.

4. Parents make an inescapable investment in you. Your life is
important to your parents. They are invested in you, and are probably
more personally interested in your well-being than anyone else you will
ever know. One might fault them for their old-fashioned child raising
techniques, their losses of patience, and their intermittent selfishness
in being more interested in their needs than in yours. It is impossible
to parent perfectly, and it is certainly unnecessary, but even imperfect
parents may be pumping enormous quantities of love and good intentions
into their children. We live our lives carrying the past and the future
with us, and while the other generations we carry with us may put us
under pressure, they keep us from feeling that we are out there
alone.

5. Parents are invested in your children as well. Your children are
your parents' grandchildren, their investment in the future. Your
children are more important to your parents than they are to anyone else
alive.

No one else listens so intently to stories about the progress of
their growth, toilet training, or music lessons. No one else's comments
on your child-raising techniques, however off the mark or even off the
wall, will be as enlightening. Because, as you become a parent, you begin
to understand their experience and all becomes clear. Your parents may
well prefer your children to you, which may hurt your feelings but
reminds you that you are part of a child-raising team.

6. Parents remind you of your origins. However low you sink,
however high you rise, your parents may be there to remind you where you
came from. This may be humbling or inspiring, but it certainly cuts
through the bullshit of your public image, your identity of the moment.
People who find it unbearable to return to the family hovel or the family
mansion, the sort of people who change their name, their accent, their
social class, are imposters carrying awful shame within them. A return
home may screw their heads back on right.

Your parents may be an embarrassment to you, as my mother was to
me. That is your problem: who the hell do you think you are anyway? Dad
and I had to carry Mother bodily out of my engagement party, while all
Betsy's family and friends watched. Dad took the legs, I took the arms,
and Mother screamed all the way out. I felt proud of my dignity in the
face of the situation. Actually there were far more times when I was
proud of Mother--and I got the suspense of never knowing which the next
experience would be.

7. Parents connect you to the human life cycle. Your parents, as
they grow older, remind you of your age and what is in store for you.
Watching them grow older can be depressing, especially if they are doing
it alone.

It's not depressing if you're there, going through this helpless
stage in their lives with them, just as they did when you were at your
most needy.

As they go through each stage of the life cycle, they can perform
their most important function by telling you what it feels like to lead
their life, to be them, and, especially, what it feels like to be them at
this point in time.

Around your parents, you may always feel like a child. The older
you get, I promise you, the better you will like that.

8. Parents are your cheerleaders. I could not call Dad and tell him
of my successes, as he would just tell me I was too smart for him and
turn the phone over to Mother. I loved to call Mother and tell her of my
successes, even if she resented them and feared they would take me away
from her. I loved to call my deaf and adoring grandmother and tell her of
my successes, even if she did not understand a word I was saying. But I
especially loved to call my Aunt Emily and tell her of my successes, as
she understood them and took delight in seeing her investment in me
bearing fruit. I could brag to my family in ways I should not brag
elsewhere. I miss my family cheerleaders at times of glory. There were
other things I needed from them, but nothing I liked so well.

My reliable cheerleaders gave me a sense of entitlement that
enables me to open myself up in my writing and in my therapy, as I have
learned to assume that what I think and feel is important. I wish such
entitlement on everyone, but only if they reciprocate.

9. Parents are your critics. I never liked the criticism I got from
my family, but then I never liked the criticism I got elsewhere either.
My family saw me most clearly and were least reticent about pointing out
my shortcomings. Sometimes they were mistaken, and sometimes they failed
to see the ways in which I was flawed like them. But there is no place
like home to get a heartfelt, honest critique of your character. And you
often need one, even if you would rather not get it.

Criticism without the cheerleading can be dispiriting, but if you
are getting some cheerleading from another source, criticism can thicken
your skin. If you expect to marry or raise adolescents, you better get
used to withering critiques of your flaws and misdeeds.

10. Parents are keepers of the family lore. Your family is the
repository of all manner of historical information you need, your family
history, your personal history, and the history of that petticoat table
you inherited from Aunt Ramona.

Family lore can be a bore, but only when you are hearing it, never
when you are relating it to the ones who will be carrying it on for you.
A family without a storyteller or two has no way to make sense out their
past and no way to get a sense of themselves. If they must rely on
popular culture to get a definition of themselves, they may define
themselves horizontally, only in terms of their generation, and not
vertically, in terms of their family history. People who don't gain their
identity both vertically and horizontally are doomed to be
two-dimensional.

One of the things Mother did that I appreciate daily is to make the
family history colorful enough to give me and my sister a sense of
family. It isn't really crucial whether the family history being
remembered is true or not, it must only be memorable.

If you have a sense of your family, however screwed up and
outrageous and disappointing they may well be, then you are never going
through life alone and you will always know who you are.