Parental Figures

"Does it feel strange to you now to be in the role of mother, when you used to be the child?"

"No," I said immediately, not even having to think about Craig's question. We were all eating dinner together, but I hadn't done anything particularly motherly. Well, maybe I had told Isaac not to throw food on the floor. "Not at all. Do you feel strange being in the role of father?"

"No," he said, also immediately. "Maybe I will when I'm the father of a teenager."

I said I didn't think so, at least not if he paid attention in the ensuing years -- after all, it will happen gradually, and there should be time to grow into the role. "But you need to pay attention -- you don't want to be one of those guys who wakes up one day and suddenly realizes, My God, I'm 55 and I'm trapped! I have a mortgage and a teenager! I'm going to go out for cigarettes and never come back!"

Craig seemed doubtful. "Does that happen to people?" he asked. I said was sure I had read it in a novel somewhere.

Then we figured that we hadn't had any problems adjusting to the idea of ourselves as Parental Figures because we are already so old. Plus, long before I had a child, I thought of myself as an adult who had the responsibility to guide younger generations. So I've been bossing children around for years now already.