N is my cousin. We are close in age and about nothing else. When we were younger, I spent a lot of time in her house in Kolkata when visiting there. Much of those times were spent with her mom (my aunt) in the kitchen. I found it easier to be there watch her work and help where I could than be with her kids - N and her brother B. I felt close to my aunt, we had things in common and even where we diverged, it was easy for me to understand why.
Being around her was frictionless and she appreciated the company because her own kids were never there beyond being physically present in their rooms. My aunt shared her anxieties about them - she had tried to be a supportive mother but the kids had both interpreted that as a sign of weakness that they could leverage and exploit. So they did. Her expectations for them were never met, nothing she asked of them (which was very minimal to begin) was ever done.
In contrast my mother had a very high performance bar for me - she simply would not stand for many of the things that my aunt's kids did routinely. I knew I had to comply or there would be unpleasant consequences. It was made clear to me that any support I expected from my parents would be extended only if I performed to their expectations - there was nothing unconditional about it, no blank checks would be signed at any time.
N and B did not have that problem. Spending time with that family was extremely illuminating for me, it informed my own parenting style in time. It became evident to me that the optimal path was somewhere between my aunt's and my mother's way. It did not run through the precise midpoint - that would be too easy. Instead it was a meandering course veering to one end sometimes and then the other. That is what made parenting so challenging, there is no one size fits all and no one strategy that serves all needs that arise in a kid's life.
Being able to stay the course and be infinitely flexible within a moral and values framework is what it takes. It is hard and almost impossible to get right. Our two families had run two experiments and I was able to see the results in both cases. N and B pursue very creative careers and B had been incomparably more successful than his sister. They have different kinds of struggles than I ever did and the way they have overcome (or tried to) is unlike anything I would have considered. My life despite many upheavals is way more conventional than theirs, some would call it far more boring. Recently, N called me out of the blue and hung up before I could answer. This would have been more than thirty years since we last spoke. Then to make it worse she wrote she's sorry she called me by accident.
Then we exchanged the completely meaningless two lines how are you? doing well. It might seem odd and rude at first blush but that interaction is very much expected from those far away childhood days. This is no different from me skipping out of interacting with N and B to the kitchen to hang out with my aunt, go out with her on her errands and so on. There was nothing there back then or now to support a conversation between us.
Comments