Adult Children

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Yesterday I went to campus to pick up Geoff, my college boy. He's at Ohio State University, for those of you who haven't been readers since he started school two years ago. Yesterday was his last day of summer as autumn quarter classes start today. So, he came home for some grocery shopping, some home-cooked supper, and some play with his pup.

After we dropped the other kids off at home, he and I went, just the two of us, grocery shopping, and we had a good time, talking, even if it was just to argue about whether or not deviled ham is a good thing (one of us thinks it is and one of us thinks it's disgusting...can you guess who thinks what?). I enjoy talking to my adult son, though sometimes I feel he talks in code -- must be a college thing.

At home he asked if I would show him how to make hummus, one of his staples at school. So while I cooked chicken for dinner, he learned to make hummus. He tuned his cell phone to a Pandora jazz station and bopped around the kitchen, going from one thing to another, tasting the hummus, adjusting, and bopping. My adult son has ADHD and you 'll never find grass growing under his feet. After he stored his "awesome" hummus away in the fridge, he bopped in to play piano, then played on the floor with the dog, and then minutes later he was in playing Mario on the Wii with his brother.

This son of mine is so much like his eight-year-old self, sometimes I could just cry (cry at the loss of that little eight-year-old boy and cry at his immaturity). But most of the time I just love being with him. He is emerging into his adult self, and I am getting a glimpse what he might look like on the other side.

Certainly parenting would be easier if teenagers formed cocoons like the moth pupae, and metamorphosed into adults while they were hidden away from the world. Maybe the transformation would be more miraculous. As it is, it is sometimes very awkward and painful to watch them make the mistakes they must make in order to change and mature into the beautiful grown people they are meant to be.

Until that happens, until he emerges completely from the cocoon that is life (and when can we say that really happens? do we ever stop maturing?) I'll be on my knees, sending up softly murmured prayers to Our Father, our mother Mary, and my son's ever-watchful Guardian Angel.

O Lord, omnipotent Father, we give you thanks for having given us children. They are our joy, and we accept with serenity the worries, fears and labors which bring us pain. Help us to love them sincerely. Through us you gave life to them; from eternity you knew them and loved them. Give us the wisdom to guide them, patience to teach them, vigilance to accustom them to the good through our example.

Support our love so that we may receive them back when they have strayed and make them good. It is often so difficult to understand them, to be as they would want us to be, to help them go on their way. Grant that they may always see our home as a haven in their time of need. Teach us and help us, O good Father, through the merits of Jesus, your Son and our Lord.
Amen.

Prayer from St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church

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