It is sad that your parents are denying themselves the joy of achieving what every parents wants. We want our children to be happy. It's really pretty simple if we remember that it is what makes them happy, not us.

That is the challenge of parenting, I suspect. I always think of those CS&N lines, "So feed them on your dreams/The ones they pick/The ones you know by."

I kinda view it as my mom have a very long pout that she is not having the life she expected. No wedding of her children when they were young, no bio grand-children - a gay child, a grandchild that is a lot of work. wah wah wah.

Dude. I can understand that--heck, my OWN life, which I have more power over, has not been quite as I might've liked. But in her case...fine, pout. Pout to yourself, or your husband, but not TO/AROUND your kids!!

if they will not meet him where he is, that he has made enough of a family for himself that he can just keep visits with them to a minimum and contact to civility.

That's sad, but awesome that he has made a family for himself.

Was it Matt who linked a couple of days ago to the story about the trans teens who fell in love in a support group at their school? IIRC, one of the dads is pretty stolid and conservative and faced a lot of horror and scolding from his fellow parents, but he talked about finally working out that this was his child's happiness, health and life, and not up for anyone else's approval or censure, and that he'd finally asked himself which he'd rather have: an unexpected living daughter or the son he'd always had, only dead by suicide. And after that it was easy.

ICompletelyON, eeep. We just had an unidentified-suitcase scare right by our office door. Which turned out, thank all TPTB, to have been left in the hall by a forgetful college student who'd just shown up for his first day of a summer volunteer gig at one of the labs down the hall. He got a gentle talking-to by the campus police, who explained (as, apparently, they have to do several times a day throughout student volunteer season) that, yes, even his cheerful plaid rolly-bag counts as a suspicious package. We're a university, but the research building is not a dorm. We do animal research. We do stem cell research. One of our now-retired faculty is missing a hand thanks to the Unabomber. Please, please exercise a grain of common sense and don't leave your unlabeled bags lying around in the hallway.

Kids these days!

Yikes, JZ! Scary.

Dana, aside from the weather, that sounds awesome.

Me, I'm operating at about 60%. No longer constantly nauseated, but there's still some vertigo when I stand or look up or turn quickly. But man, my back was killing me after basically 24 hours in bed! (Which I suspect means I need a new mattress, memory foam topper notwithstanding.)

Glad you're feeling better, Consuela. Hope you are at 100% soon.

60% sounds a lot better than yesterday, but still kind of awful, Suela. Vibing (but very gently, non-disruptively) lots of inner-ear~ma to you.

Suela, I'm glad you're feeling better and you have some idea of what's going on and how to fix it. Hoping you make a full recovery soon!

That is the challenge of parenting, I suspect. I always think of those CS&N lines, "So feed them on your dreams/The ones they pick/The ones you know by."

That reminds me of the Sweet Honey in the Rock song that goes through my head periodically: "Your children / are not your children / they are the sons and the daughters of life / longing for itself / they come through you / but they are not from you / and though they are with you / they belong not to you."

That is highly encouraging, Suela! I learned I'm a head-nodder when I went back to work with the vertigo, and could barely make it through a meeting. Sitting at my desk alone was OK, though!

Thinking about lives and expectations and families is making me surprisingly emotional right now. It's like, I feel fine with my own day-to-day, but I feel bad that I don't have a kid for my dad to play with.

MOVING ON.

It's always hard to feel like you're not living up to expectations, but like the lyrics Kate quoted say, it's not really our job as parents to expect anything from our kids. We have them, and we're supposed to raise them to be capable, self-reliant adults who can make their own choices, whatever they are.

I feel like I get both sides of this, though, and that it's always easier said than done, especially when it comes to my oldest. And no matter what, I still feel like I let down my parents.

LIFE. Is hard.

Also, ::primal scream of OMGWTF my job I hate you::

It's like, I feel fine with my own day-to-day, but I feel bad that I don't have a kid for my dad to play with.

Oh yeah. Yes, indeed.