Perspective

I was 24 when I got married.  I had a delayed teenager-hood due to the fact that I was not popular in high school. When I went to college, I did all the things some people did in high school–got drunk, experimented, stayed up as late as I wanted, partied, etc. I basically felt as though I were an adult, even though my adulthood was false being that I was living in student housing without any real responsibilities other than my school work. It was a great time in my life. I learned a lot about myself; much of what I am today (mainly my liberal views) was shaped in college.

When I had to return to my parents’ to live at the end of those four years, there was–as I am sure you can guess–quite an awakening for both my parents and myself. I assumed I’d just be able to live on as before–coming in at all hours of the night and not reporting my whereabouts–without comment from the parents. It didn’t quite end up working that way. I felt confined, trapped. As a result, I suppose I behaved much like the troubled teen at the age of 22.

The first thing I did when I started dating Mike was move out of my parents’ house. Though he asked–begged and pleaded, actually–for me to move in with him, my long-abandoned-but-still-nagging Catholic conservative upbringing told me that it would be better to only live with a man if he were marrying me, or at least promising to. At the time, our relationship was only two months old; it was far too soon to be making those sort of promises. So, I found digs at the only place available to me with my 8.25/hour temporary’s salary: I moved in with my best friend Melissa who had a house in Cleveland. She also had two kids and a husband. I lived in her basement. It was very modest digs, but I had my freedom and I didn’t care. Besides, my Catholic upbringing was not above spending nights or weekends at Mike’s house… and now I could without my parents’ knowing or caring.

Needless to say, my parents weren’t real happy about my new living arrangements. I guess they saw it as a snub since they offered so much more by way of shelter than living in my best friend’s basement in not the greatest–safe, but not the best–neighborhood in Cleveland. In fact, the day I moved into Melissa’s house, my dad stated that he would rather I moved in with Mike! Go figure.

Well, let’s just say that due to a number of other issues, I didn’t treat my parents so great in the first few years out of college and when I was married. I still behaved as though I were in high school. Every suggestion either parent would make about things I should do in my life, I took as not accepting me or my ability to make decisions. So instead of saying, “Thanks for the advice, Mom” and “Don’t need your help, Dad,” I felt I had to defend my position on everything. There were lots of fights. I behaved badly.

To top it off, Mike’s family seemed to immediately love me unconditionally. And, well, they weren’t my parents so they didn’t interfere in the ways I thought my own parents were interfering. I took a liking to them and felt a closeness. I hate to say that I really spent more time with them even though they lived out-of-state. Mike and I called them once week. It was our Sunday ritual. I shamefully favored his family to my own. I didn’t see the dysfunctional alcoholic structure of it back then, even though Mike had tried to warn me by having me read a book about adult children of alcoholics when we first started dating.

I feel bad in retrospect just how much I cut my parents out of everything back then. When I was planning my wedding, I didn’t let my mom help me with anything but shopping for the wedding dress. I think I could have been a better daughter all around. I kind of secluded myself and Mike from the family. In fact, both my parents have expressed on several occasions that they felt they never got to really know Mike. And that’s a shame. I was too busy battling my parents while going through my own delayed growing pains.

Funny how death puts everything in perspective. In the end, I learned that Mike’s family was not the family I thought they were. I put my trust in the wrong people and I was taken advantage of. When I could have allowed my own parents to help me in the grieving process, I shut them out. I put my trust in people who ended up betraying me–and in some cases, emotionally terrorizing me–later. I am not saying that every set of in-laws is this way. I also won’t say that my experiences with Mike’s family has made me readily willing to accept the love and friendship my future in-laws may offer. However, I will say that I learned that blood is thicker than any other relation. The people who are responsible for your presence on this planet are the only people with an emotional investment in your welfare. Even if they don’t show it all the time, they are the ones who are bound to it, no matter what.

It has taken me a long time to come around. I had a lot of things about myself I had to work out. Mainly, I had to learn that I could sustain myself without help. Sure, it’s good to get help from people when they offer, but I needed a period of time in which I could prove to myself that I was self-sufficient. I went from my parents’ house to living in my best friend’s basement for a mere $250/month, to living in an apartment in North Canton (which really, by that point, became a second location for me and Mike to spend our time), to living as a wife with Mike. I had never really had to make it on my own. When he died, I wasn’t sure I could, even though I had a pretty good job by then. But I’d never lived on my own, really, and I was scared to death.

So I spent a lot of time figuring things out. I resisted help from my parents and I still lived in my own world without them. I wasn’t trying to have a relationship with them. And that’s pretty much how I limped through the rest of my twenties.

It has taken several years, but somewhere along the way, I emerged from my delayed teenager cocoon. I can’t say exactly when it happened. One day, I just started to be friends with my parents. I reached a point where it didn’t embarrass me anymore to have them present at the same place where I’d gathered my friends. I invited them to my annual birthday party bash. I started inviting them to the parties I hosted at my house. I wanted a relationship with them. As an adult.

My dad and I go to Indians games together. He texts me from time to time throughout the week. Once or twice a month we catch dinner and beers at Ray’s Place in Kent. We sit around and talk. It doesn’t even have to be deep discussion. It’s just father and daughter hanging out. It started, I guess, as payment for all the work he’s done on my house. But then it delved into just doing it to do it. Amazingly, I learned, I like doing things with him.

My mom and I now go out to see shows. Last night, in fact, we saw Don Giovanni at Playhouse Square. We went out to eat and talked. It was nice. We also like to go shopping for clothes together. We have similar tastes in jewelry. Later in the month, we’re going to make Christmas ornaments with sour dough ornaments, like we used to do when I was a kid. I’ve also learned that I like doing things with her.

I’m an adult now. Maybe part of growing up is being happy enough with yourself to not become intimidated by the advice of others. Maybe growing up also means that you can spend time with your parents and have just as much fun as you would with any of your friends. Growing up, I think, is the realization that your parents are just people. They did the best they could with what they knew at the time, what seemed right to them. It’s useless now to blame them for their shortcomings–if you think they had them. Though maybe that too was a product of being young, that self-assurance that you would have done a better job somehow or that you knew more about life than they did.

And I know at times I was a challenging kid. But as an adult, when I look at my age-mates as parents, I realize that my parents did a damned good job (better, in fact, that some people my age). They got me through the childhood into adulthood without a major calamity; I’m alive and not a drug addict;  and I’m a responsible, independent woman with a good head on my shoulders. I have always been respectful of people. I have a great work ethic now (only disturbed by dealing with loss and finding my place in the world, which has nothing to do with anything they did).

I feel like this phase of my life is completely different from my last. I can see with real clarity now what a little shit I was to my own family in what was otherwise the most blissful years of my life. I should have let my parents know Mike. I should have shared our bliss and not made them into outsiders. I shouldn’t have held close to my heart the wrong people. I ever fall in love again, everything will be much different. I will let my parents know the man I love. I will let them be as involved in my life as they are now.

As for future in-laws… Well. It doesn’t escape my notice that the type of man I’d want to love would have the kind of relationship I have with my own parents. I would want him to understand why I wanted to spend time with my parents just as  I would want him to spend time with his own. Likewise, I’d want him to have a good relationship with my parents. I would want my parents to know him. I suppose I can’t have that without offering the same on his side. So, despite my reservations, fears, and outright misgivings, I’d probably have to unlearn what I learned from Mike’s family. It would be a painful process. I am not sure how that will all come down. I’d try. I guess I would approach it the way one approaches any new relationship: carefully and cautiously.

In many ways, I was still a kid when I married Mike and I was a kid when I lost him. Maturity and–unfortunately, experience–has brought me perspective. I can’t go back and change the things I did wrong or those things didn’t do that I should have. I  can change the way I behave now. You only have so much time with people in this life. You should make the most of what you have with them now. As I learned with Mike, you’ll only regret it later if you don’t.