«It’s not a phase mum!», Or when to stop trying to be the perfect children

At sixteen with braces like at twenty-six in the midst of a global pandemic, there is always a load of anticipation and nervousness in gathering around the dining table with people who have known you since “you were this tall” (see the gesture of the hand to position yourself at the height of a bedside table). Maybe you’ve gone to live away from home and are experiencing the thrill of adult life: between overcooked pasta, missing cfu, and being locked out of the apartment three times in a row, the package to offer your parents is more loaded than ever. All parents, at least a large part, or at least mine: grown up with a specific itinerary since they were in the cradle, given by my grandparents who in turn followed another itinerary.

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I don’t know in your eyes, but my parents have always seemed adults to me: adults who know how to manage bills, regulate the correct oven temperature, do not confuse the washing of whites with that of colored ones, have always had a partner, met with relative ease in a world without Tinder, which they brought to the altar (because the wedding in the church is a completely different effect), and then put me into the world between strollers, birthdays, and anniversaries. Work, marriage, and family are the three goals that my parents, and perhaps yours too, have pledged to achieve in order to earn the title of true adults. The grandparents will be proud of them, because they respected the rules and kept the expectations: they did as they were taught. Those teachings handed down from generation to generation now come to us.

What makes us perfect children and adults in 2021?

The two things go hand in hand: they told us that by following that path, safe and recognizable, everything will be fine. We will be presentable and valid for society, but even more so in the eyes of us raised. We will do like them, if not better. But seeing our parents again, now that they no longer prepare our schoolwork and there is no meeting with the teachers to confirm whether we are good or not, anxiety joins: exams given in time? Job prospects? And when will it be your turn?

It is evident every year that we are not the children that our parents believed us to be. All they know how to do we do it worse: from the washing machine to the umpteenth guy who ghosted us (or worse still, we have ghosted him!). It happens that we try to look so much like our parents that we follow their same path in order to never be wrong. If we do like them there will surely be a remedy, because they will know how to recognize it and will always have a solution ready. But What happens when we take another route? Worse still, a road that theirs they never took and they don’t know why it’s ours alone? How to reconcile the children we have always been with the people we are becoming?

“You’ll see, it’s just a phase!” they told us when we wanted septum and bleach our hair lemon green like Billie Eilish.

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And if at twenty and more years we are not only at the third discoloration, but the job we are looking for is not in a snap of the fingers, all in all we are fine even without a boyfriend *, and the idea of ​​holding a baby in our arms shakes hands and we already see it falling? Global pandemic permitting, it is clear. We think we are naturally defective. We will never be “perfect” children, we will disappoint them, and they won’t know how to save us from our troubles because it’s a world they’ve never encountered before.

But if each generation is different from the previous one, why should ours be the faulty one? Just because it doesn’t stick to a set pattern?

For the next time we sit at the table with them we may remember that between one trouble and another, maybe we’re just doing our best. As difficult and uncertain as it is, the path we have taken is no better or worse than that of our parents: it is just different, in a world that continues to change.

No, this is not a phase, mom. And that’s okay.

via GIPHY