The strangers we love

The awkward dance of parents and adult children

Before we begin…

Have you ever glimpsed the people your parents might have been if they had not become parents? Have you ever wanted to? How easy has it been to know your adult children or your parents outside the context of the parent-child relationship? Are there some things that should just be left mysteries?

Welcome! You’ve reached Spark.  Learn more here or just read on. If you received this from a friend, please join us by subscribing. If you see something you like, please hit that heart so others can find us more easily. And if this email is truncated in your inbox, just click the headline above to come on through and read everything all at once.

People You Happen to Know

From the story, “Axis” by Alice Munro, a conversation between two middle-aged adults on a train:

"…But you're okay, I guess. You've got your kids."

“Well, after a point," Avie says, "after a point, you know, they're just people. I mean they're yours, of course. But they're really -- they're people you know.” God strike me dead, she thinks.

My son in a photo I tend to break out many years around his birthday. Here, he is seven in what was his natural state: covered in mud, clutching a frog that cost us all a night of sleep. The man he is now is in there somewhere. I hope the kid is too.

About 13 years ago, I flew to Colorado to visit my son, then thirty-six. I saw him before he saw me and I paused just outside the sliding door of the tiny Grand Junction airport to consider the man leaning against his black pick-up, cell phone to his ear. His profile was blurred in the evening shadows but I recognized his voice. How could I not? It has been the one constant in all our time together and apart. Mostly apart. 

From behind came "Excuse Me's" as other travelers brushed past to find their families or their cars. My son glanced up but didn't see me so he continued to fire instructions into the phone and I guessed he was talking with one of his employees. 

In those moments before I walked out of the shadows towards him, I saw my son as those people passing me might have seen him, a white man verging on middle age, trying to get a little business done while he waited by his truck, the kind of person I might make up a little story about as I waited for my ride. 

If I noticed him at all. 

Would that be possible? Yes, of course. If we weren’t related, I very likely would have passed on with no more than a glance and a swift impression that I might or might not file for later. We would just be two strangers breathing the same air for a few moments. Or, maybe I would have stopped, asked directions, gotten into one of those fun conversations that you can have with strangers, the kind that go to unexpected places.

I felt a sense of detachment that was, just for a moment, liberating. Then, scandalized, I rushed towards him. I wanted to get close enough to smell him, to feel the scratch of reddish stubble on my cheek when he kissed me hello. I wanted to claim him as mine, to feel the order of the universe restored.

I’ve got to tell you, though, the universe has continued to shift. My son is in late-forties, I’m in my sixties and our stories have long-since diverged. We love each other without question and for this I will always be grateful because love between parent and child is not a given even if the bonds are strong. On the other hand, we live very separate lives and have for a very long time. More and more I’ve caught myself looking at my son as a stranger — an interesting person I’d like to get to know. Sometimes I imagine my son asking me about who I was before him and what my life is like now, without him.

I imagine sometimes what it would be like to encounter my kid in the wild, one stranger to another, unburdened by the past, our roles, and expectations. Just for a while. Just to see what it would be like if we were not mother and son, but people, just people. 

Postscript

I shared the words above back in 2020 as part of another post. Time has passed. My son turns 49 today. No matter how long it has been, I remember everything about the day he was born – I was only 18 and my prefrontal cortex was still a sponge. Those memories, rich as they are, feel at times like artifacts from another place and time, no longer truly relevant to the people we are now. 

As I looked over this short essay, I realized that I still imagine what it might be like to come upon my son “in the wild,” unburdened by the relationship of parent and child, just two people encountering each other. We hope to see each other in a couple of weeks after a year and a half or so of living our lives several states away from each other, connected by phone and text. I want to get to know this man better. After all, he’s someone I love. 

The dance of adult parents and children: books and stories 

Amor Towles 

I went to see Amor Towles speak the other night, part of his tour with his latest book, Table for Two. This collection of stories includes “I Will Survive,” a story in which a daughter decides to uncover a truth that her mother no longer wishes to know. In a few pages, the story shows the dance of parents and their adult children can be awkward as each decides when and how to play the parent card or when to allow each other their secrets. 

I bought the book at Tuesday’s event and am almost finished with it. If you are a Towles fan (A Gentleman in Moscow, Lincoln Highway, Rules of Civility), you will appreciate this collection. The final “fiction” in the collection, “Eve in Hollywood,” is a novella that picks up where Rules of Civility ends. I’ll have more to say about this in a future issue of Spark. 

Alex Dobrenko

This question of who we are with our children and without them doesn’t occur to most parents before they have kids. In his essay, the detonator (no, I will not grieve my pre-parent self),

Alex Dobrenko`

explores the stripping away of identity that happens for many new parents. He’s writing from the sleepless, muck-filled thicket of early parenthood and made me remember those days when I knew I was no longer the person I thought I’d been (although, at 18, it was more the person I hoped to be but had not yet had a chance to meet). It got me thinking about how much my adult identity has been shaped by being a parent, and who I might have been had I never become one. 

The parents we will never know

The flip side of my fantasy is to go back in time and meet my own parents as they were before they had any of us. Looking through old photographs and even movies over the years has shown me glimpses of the people they were before I needed them. I sometimes wonder if being parent and child kept us from knowing each other as well as we might have or if this is the natural order of things. We can’t know anyone entirely, not even those who are connected by love or blood. A few years ago, I came across this small paragraph by author of The Mothers, Britt Bennet. She found a photograph of her mom at 19 and wondered about the young girl her mother was before she became a mother. Her thoughts turned into one of the essays in this intriguing book edited by Edan Lepucki: Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers As We Never Saw Them. 

Welcome New Subscribers!

If you’ve just subscribed, thank you so much for being here. If you would like to check out past issues, here’s a quick link to the archives. Be sure to check out our Resources for Readers and Writers too where you will find links for readers, book clubs, writers, and writing groups. And if you’d like to browse for your next read, don’t forget to check out books by authors in our community at the Spark Author Page which will be updated with new names and books for next week’s issue. Another great source: the many wonderful reviews you’ll find among the #Bookstackers. 

The more the merrier! Please share with your friends and invite them to join us!

Let me know how you are and what you’re reading. If there’s an idea, book, or question you’d like to see in an upcoming issue of Spark, let us know! Use the comment button below or just hit reply to this email and send your message directly. 

And remember, If you like what you see or it resonates with you, please take a minute to click the heart ❤️ below - it helps more folks to find us!

Ciao for now! 

Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…a story in two photographs

A long-ago trip to Costco caught a moment between a father, his son, and a bear. I wonder where all of them are now? 

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”: 

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone  -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed. 

I can’t wait to see what you send!

And remember, if you like what you see or it resonates with you, please share Spark with a friend and take a minute to click the heart ❤️ below - it helps more folks to find us!