Last December, in some bizarre attempt to be festive, we started the odd family tradition of waking our children for school with the radio blaring Christmas music from the living room downstairs. Don’t judge. So, for a few weeks, they (and we) were treated to Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole at an obscene volume while they fumbled for blankets and buried their heads under pillows.
When Christmas ended, we kept the tradition going for a little while, with the musical selections drawn instead from a Motown channel I’d added to Pandora on a whim. Not too long after the adding of the channel, however, my older son dialed up the channel on his own. Yup, he boarded the soul train right there in the the living room, grooving to the Jackson 5. Or maybe it was Smokey Robinson. Sam Cooke? Since then, the Motown channel has been among our go-to soundtracks for wrestling matches and dance parties alike.
Who would have thought that my kids would come to love the Temptations and Marvin Gaye? It was, for me, a very small example of a larger truth: they’ll make their own choices, follow their own paths, be their own people. And, even though I don’t consider myself a classic type A, this can be at times quite distressing. There’s a fascination – at least I’ve felt it – with the desire to create little carbon copies of myself in my children. Or if not mini-Me’s, there’s this instinctive urge to be in control, to grab the wheel with clenched fingers and make every twist and turn, guide and direct, control (there’s that word again) their progress through every plot twist of their story. This is all done, I suppose, in the hopes that I can cushion their falls, that heartbreak and soul-wrenching conflict will be remain a distant drumbeat, and the resolution of their story will be smooth and beautiful.
But their story is not mine to write.
