From the Editor’s Desk: Family (Premium)

My mother has said two things to me that are undeniably true. I wish there was more, in a way, but I'll never forget either of them.

The first isn't of much interest, but it arrived when I was a little kid, under 7 years old because we still lived in Hyde Park and hadn't yet moved to Dedham. She told me that I should make lists because I never remember anything. Whether this was an early sign of ADHD is beside the point now, but probably. And it is embarrassing to me that I rarely acted on this all-too-true observation in a meaningful way until recently.

We were sitting with friends we see regularly at a bar in Pennsylvania late last summer when another couple, one we all knew but didn't see regularly, came in. Patty, one of the friends we were sitting with, immediately asked them how their daughter, who she named explicitly, was doing. They had a brief exchange and then the couple sat down.

I was staring at Patty. "How the hell did you remember their kid's name?" I finally blurted out. "I didn't," she said. "I can't remember names to save my life. So I keep notes on my phone." She then showed Stephanie and I those notes, which included the names of our kids, too. Genius. Obvious, yes. But also genius. And since this exchange, I've done the same: I have a notebook (or whatever it's called) in Notion called Names. I've used it extensively on this trip to Mexico, some of the names here are challenging.

The second of my mother's indelible observations was about parenting. This is a sore spot for me because my parents are never going to make any "best of" lists when it came to parenting. As I've written in the past, they are what I think of as negative influences, object lessons in how not to do things properly. So when she offered me the following tidbit while my own kids were still young, I wasn't particularly receptive.

"You don't understand," she told me. "It doesn't matter how old your kids are, you'll always be their parent. You'll always worry about them and wonder whether they're safe. You will do anything for them."

As the kids grew up, I observed parents around us, including friends of ours, behave in ways that we found troubling. There were the "my kids would never do that" parents who frustrated us with their stereotypical behavior. But also people we liked and respected who turned into mental wrecks, obsessively helicopter parenting their children throughout high school and beyond. This seemed ridiculous to us. Our jobs as parents, as Stephanie and I saw it, was to prepare them for the real world. And part of that means letting go.

My mother was right. But you can't let go.

All you can really do is try to stamp down that demon rising inside of you, the well-intentioned but ill-conceived desire to just make everything right for your kids when things go south. That was true when they were little. And it's true now when they're both ostensibly adults in their mid-20s. It never goes away.

I was reminded of...