the urge to helicopter parent your parents

i never imagined being close to my parents as an adult. our extended family was necessarily fractured growing up and i just assumed that parents were people you outgrew. plus there was no way i was ever going to live in philadelphia, as much as i loved the city where i was born.

then i went home with my college boyfriend for the first time and i met his grandmothers. they were best friends. my mind was blown, i’d never seen mine in the same room.

these grandmas had both gone to BU and unknowingly lived in the same dorm. many years later, when my boyfriend’s parents started dating each other, they put two and two together.

every summer that i came home with my boyfriend i felt an overwhelming sense of love and affection in their home. during the lazy afternoons of the warmest days of the year, multiple generations of family and friends came together easily, dogs roamed freely, and we had deep conversations with his elders. everyone was always hugging and cuddling, a casual arm wrapped around the other for an entire conversation.

my boyfriend and his brother were openly affectionate with each other in a way that i hadn’t witnessed boys express their emotions before. i’d watch his grandmothers whispering and giggling off to the side in their own little world. the two of them swept me into their arms and welcomed me into their family like the warm bubbes they were.

i told my mom brazenly, i want that.

it all felt totally possible and i was convinced that, with enough oversight, i could architect this reality. our moms were strikingly similar, especially in their humor and the way they liked to dress, it all made sense to me that this was my future. in the end, letting go of my boyfriend’s family was much harder than it was to break up with him. but the vision stuck.

i knew what i wanted: big family, grandmother besties, multi-generational hangs, friends who stop by unannounced, kids, and dogs.

i dated a few more boys after my first love and continued to collect information about what i wanted in a partner, the final pieces were someone who would build a forever life with me in new york city and bonus if i could find a man who loved to cook and knew how to cook well. i let go of any expectations around family, or so i thought.

about a year into dating dan, i met his parents and it was love at first sight. i immediately felt i want them to be my parents too. they’re warm, affectionate and engaging. they ask questions and follow up questions, they clearly adore my husband, and they value family above all else. adopt me, i wanted to tell them.

from the outside, it seemed like our moms could not be more different, but that was okay. i didn’t need our moms to be besties. i felt grateful to have found such loving in laws, that would be more than enough for me.

i never prescribed their friendship, i just hoped that they would get along. i felt protective of their interactions and wanted to coach them both on how to talk to each other. but it turns out i didn’t need to do any of that. our moms saw straight past what i perceived their differences to be and right into one another’s hearts — which are exactly the same.

i was prepared for grandchild jealousy and ready to intervene in any potential custody disputes, inspections of how and where my family spends our time, but none of that came.

they always want to spend more time with our son, but they are generous in how they share their grand baby with one another. and i’m forever grateful because that type of parental pressure feels like more than i can bear.

while i was distracted and worrying about how to orchestrate their familial kindness with one another, they were busy building a friendship that is all their own. i forget how i found out, but it came up casually and they were like oh yeah, we text all the time.

LIKE IT WAS NO BIG DEAL MY GRANDMOTHER BESTIE DREAMS WERE COMING TRUE.

every morning they text about the weather, flowers, their grandkids, and now their most recent travels. they hug each other for a long time when they see each other and send pictures of their shared grandchild when the other is missing him.

so when my mother in law asked if she could invite my folks to easter this year (my parents would stay at our house), my heart soared. please, please, pleeeease. i told my parents. my family doesn’t even go to church with everyone else, we just eat a lot of yummy food and hang out all day with family, it’s really not much different from a large filipino gathering, pleeeease.

they happily accepted the invitation.

—

nothing makes me feel more grown-up than hosting my parents in my house. i love welcoming them into the world that dan and i have built for our family. it feels so good to stock our fridge with their favorites and carve out space for their needs and desires, like privacy for my mom to conduct therapy with her patients and the final four on the television for my dad to watch basketball.

the first day we arrived i was setting up the house and as i was putting dishes away i looked out the window and saw my dad and my son laughing and playing basketball. i checked on them a few times, specifically my dad, until i realized that they were both exceedingly happy to play together outside for hours.

i’m not the only one who loves spending time with a toddler.

when my son was a baby it was much clunkier for all of us, first time parents and first time grandparents learning our new roles for the first time. the overnight transition from daughter to parent was awkward and a little stressful for me and none of us knew how to act.

two and a half years later my parents seem happy to defer to us as the adults in charge, making my role much simpler. in the beginning i used to attempt to context switch from parent to daughter and back again in the same instant. now those identities are more closely woven together. today i feel respected as the parent and loved as the daughter, and we all feel more comfortable with me being in charge. not to mention, we are all more relaxed with my son, who has proven much less breakable than he appeared in his infant days.

we don’t have it all figured out, of course. i still feel the urge to micro-manage and helicopter parent by parents. i need to get better at letting go, about carving out my alone time and encouraging others to do the same. there are ways i can be better about inviting my parents to interact with my home as they would their own. and i feel myself getting caught up in the trap of we must do everything together, every moment of every day, even though none of us truly wants that.

my desire to control comes from a good place, i want my parents to feel cared for, but we all appreciate downtime. it takes time and practice to reach a level of comfortable cohabitation and we’re all still getting used to the changing of the guards.

—

this past weekend, as i was deeply enjoying days of celebration with family and friends, i felt the familiar tug to be in multiple places at once, physically and mentally. tending to friends, books, articles, a voice memo that requires more heart/privacy/presence than i can access while hosting my parents, rest and trying to understand what that looks like, and failing not to snap at my husband a little as i mentally and emotionally juggled parenting at the forefront of it all.

i joked with my best friend (who also feels the excitement, love and pressure to be everywhere, with everyone, all at once) that i wouldn’t be able to see her this weekend even though we were only a few blocks apart. when the day came to grab coffee, i felt so guilty for leaving my parents that i called to cancel.

we were facetiming as she brushed her teeth and i did the dishes and i was like my toddler is toddlering, i don’t know that i have the energy to take him anywhere.

she just kept brushing her teeth, holding space for my exhaustion as the sunlight poured in through the windows. after a few moments i felt my whole being relax with her and i snapped out of it, fuck it, i’m getting dressed, see you in ten.

it’s hard for me to remember that my parents are actually very supportive of me carving out time for myself. that it makes sense to want some alone time when hosting for five days, or any amount of time. that rest looks like more than physical sleep.

rest is having time to put the house back together at the end of the day and waking up with clean surfaces and dishes. rest is spending time alone. rest is recharging with friends. rest is letting some things wait and more balls drop. rest is making time to workout. rest is knowing that i can’t be everywhere at once and being okay with that. rest is saying thank you. rest is looking my partner in the eye and asking what do you need right now. rest is story time with our son at the end of the day.

rest is letting go and letting our parents surprise us, too.

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