Last week Clare called me about a lost car key. It was really lost, not I-can’t-remember-where-I-put-it lost. She’d misplaced her backup key years ago, so now she was left with no key at all. Clare handled the problem on her own, but she first called me to ask whether she should go to a locksmith or to a car dealership. For two very different reasons, this short conversation with my daughter brought me back to the days when I was her age.
First of all, I knew that Clare’s new key fob was going to cost about $400. Clare joked that replacing her car key was going to eat up her pay raise for the year. The joke was an exaggeration, but not much of one. Four hundred dollars is more than what I paid for my first car. It is exactly what I paid for my second car. I’d bought it from the guy across the hall to move from Boston to Washington, DC for the summer. Our agreement was that if the car didn’t make it to Washington, he’d give me my money back.
Clare’s phone call also made me think of something else, something that has nothing to do with car keys or cars. The call made me realize that, as a young adult, I don’t remember ever asking my own parents for advice about anything. I liked my parents and I respected them, but once I left home, I considered myself on my own. I can’t say for sure, but I think that my mom and dad felt the same. I believe Clare to be as self-sufficient as I was at her age, but the relationship that she has with her parents is different from the one I had with mine.
Going to college, switching colleges, dropping out of college, returning to college, getting married, getting divorced, going to grad school for a masters, moving to Minneapolis, then to Boston, then to San Francisco, then returning to grad school for a Ph.D. were all big decisions. Usually I told my parents about these decisions before I acted on them, but I never asked them for their opinion. My mom always thought whatever I did was fine. My dad expressed his displeasure only twice. The first time was when I dropped out of college. The second time was when Lisa and I decided to get divorced. He had no qualms about criticizing my decision to drop out of school. Commenting on the divorce took a lot out of him.
Was my relationship with my parents different from Clare’s because the times have changed or because we were raised differently? The answer is that we were raised differently because the times have changed. By time I was seven years old I’d disappear for an afternoon, and my mom and dad had no idea where I was. When I was in high school, my parents had no say as to what classes I took, and while they were adamant that I go to college, they had no hand in the college admission process. Once I was in college, my folks never asked me about my major. They never asked whether I had enough money. They did wonder what I planned to do after college, but did not object when I told them that my plan was to travel until the grace period on my student loans ran out.
Which parent/child relationship is better? Maybe Clare needs to figure things out for herself. Maybe I am supposed to put my years of acquired experience to good use by helping my daughter avoid at least a few mistakes. Maybe Clare just wanted to know how to get a new car key, and I shouldn’t make a bigger deal of it.
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