Relationships Independent or Dependent?

Written in 2003, musings about adult children…

This week Montel Williams said, “People make a choice to either give to, or to take from.”
If you believe in Zen you see that this struggle of give and take is inevitable, proper and balanced. At its optimum level, this struggle goes on in a balanced way in every relationship. Sometimes we give and sometimes we take. Our ability to need and be needed nurtures our souls and gives us health. Some relationships are distorted, sometimes by necessity, sometimes by nature and sometimes by sickness. The relationship of parent to child is a distorted relationship, because in it’s pure form it only balances as a matter of generations, rather than in a few days or weeks. As a child we need unconditionally and if we are very lucky we have a parent who gives unconditionally. This giving is the ultimate gesture of love, because it puts aside personal comfort and personal gratification for the health and safety of another. It does have its rewards, we are all comforted by the sight of a happy infant or playful child, we all gain peace with these visions.
As our children mature, we expect for our children to do more and more things for themselves. From the 4-month-old infant who holds her own bottle to the 16-year-old boy who gets his first job, we progressively increase our expectations for our offspring. Society generally gives us a roadmap for such expectations. Elementary school is one such road map. If a child is naturally handicapped, these expectations may alter according to the handicap. If a child is not handicapped, yet the expectations do not follow, then a handicap may be manufactured.
Back to the taking and giving which is inherent in the universe. To be in a condition of eternal giving, forces the other into the position of taking. To confound the issue, children naturally make unreasonable demands that if not refused become needs of the distorted kind. Some children may be taught the unreasonableness of the demand, some children do not learn the unreasonableness of the demand and thus the appropriate negative response has to be repeated and repeated over and over again.
Therein lies so much of my intergenerational difficulty. My mother was the eternal giver. My mother had no idea that her lack of the ability to take, her lack of clarity created handicaps in others. Part of the reason my mother did not know this, is that my mother was sure that she was not “enough”. She based her self-evaluation on her income. Her income was the measure by which she could satisfy her children’s wants and desires. An inability to satisfy was anathema for her. I favored my mother’s giving state, but have always been panicked by the results. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice a lack of independence in my siblings. As I interacted with my family, I was constantly in internal conflict, I was jealous of the financial benefit that my siblings received and at the same time detested their dependence on an old lady. These conflicting emotions caused some confusion for me. This was an ongoing struggle that at times I won, and at times I lost.
To give my mother credit, we all made choices, some of us were like the children who you continually have to repeat no to, and some of us abhorred the dependence on her. The dependence was multi-faceted, it wasn’t strictly financial by any means, it was all mixed up in love, acceptance, need and despair. Life is like that, the complex concepts are often misunderstood.
Last week, Jo and I were talking and I made one of those statements where, you know, you surprise even yourself: “I’m not going to be like gramma with ice cream, movies and two living rooms.” Later, I wasn’t sure if I had hurt her feelings. Let’s face it, everything about my mother made us feel good. I was always comforted by her presence and I always felt loved. Importantly, what I resist about my mother is that eternal giving state that doesn’t allow others to give and thus creates distortions. It is not appropriate to have adult relationships where in one partner in the relationship is always the giver. Whether that relationship be mother and son, father and daughter or any combination of the many possibilities. The only time in a child’s life when ultimate taking is appropriate is in infancy. The reality is, as adults we gain (receive) great gratification for being the source of comfort and love to an infant.
I’ve gotta tell you, it has been difficult to resist my mother’s example of selfless giving. The thing is, I think my mother died because she was tired. She was in bankruptcy and had overextended her energies as a human being. In the end, she had no idea how to be a taker. She made some efforts in that direction, but those efforts were minimal, she was unable to imagine herself on the receiving end of anything. I have aspired to her level of giving, yet I was consistently afraid of producing handicapped children. My greatest gift, I felt, was to encourage self achievement, not to steal achievement by undermining with the faithlessness of financial rewards. To me, borrowing money from my mother meant that I could not do it on my own. The fact is, I could, I can and I do. That is the way I feel about my children, they could, they can and they do. My goal has always been to make the people that I love feel capable and strong. Of course, like yin and yang, we must also experience being incapable and weak, but these are fleeting moments that we pass on a promising path to self fulfillment.
As to the other: the complicating question of dependency and need. Yes, it is the way it is, we do need each other. The difference is that we work from a position of strength, equals who balance each other. There is nothing more that I would like than to own ten acres, one for each child and three acres for a clubhouse. I want to live close and true, to be part of you every single day. I want to be part of the rich and fulfilling happiness and sadness that colors our lives. Yet, when I go, you will not be handicapped, you will be strong, you will endure and you will assure that your children are also strong.