(Here is the first section of chapter 2 from What Did I Tell You?)
Parents comprise a unique category in the domain of human relationships, possessing distinctive qualities so heedlessly taken for granted, their magnitude commonly, sometimes conveniently overlooked. The most obvious of these being the fact that we all have them. We don’t all have siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins. We don’t all choose to marry and have spouses. We don’t all choose to become parents. But we all have them.
We all have two biological parents, a male and a female. Interventions of medical science or circumstances beyond their control may prevent a direct relationship with them. But whether or not we know who they are, their genetic contribution is evidence of their existence.
Hence, the parents who beget us are not necessarily the ones who bring us up. Throughout human history, children have been placed in the care of adults who may include one or the other or neither of their biological parents. Whether occurring at birth or sometime prior to reaching the age of majority, the reasons for these arrangements are countless and complex. Unless unavoidable, due to death or the threat of abuse, the absence or exclusion of a parent is a decision that should never be made lightly.
The vast majority of us eventually learn that we are the result of a male sperm fertilizing a female ovum which gestates inside a female womb for approximately forty weeks. Regardless of the composition of the parental unit to which a child is delivered, be it a single individual, a couple of same or different sexes or genders, or some combination of genetically related or unrelated, multigenerational caregivers, curiosity and questions are likely to abound when knowledge of human reproduction is acquired.
For those individuals who learn their biological parents differ from the ones who raised them, the discovery can have momentous, sometimes devastating repercussions. The timing and manner in which this information is revealed is critical. Consequently, it behooves those accepting responsibility for a non-biological child to proactively prepare to respond to queries regarding their biological origins in a sensitive, developmentally appropriate manner.
Currently ancestry searches are at an all-time high. Knowing who we came from is a major part of knowing who we are. So, it’s curious how a child’s ignorance of their parentage is routinely trivialized. Romanticizing the decision to deny a child knowledge of or access to a parent, as is often depicted on the page, stage, and screen, is imprudent. Observation and experience suggest that lacking any desire to know about biological parents is rare, even if only to ascertain genetic implications. Biological parents are a part of us, a part of our identity despite our knowledge of them, or lack thereof. Suggesting the absence or exclusion of a parent is inconsequential is unwise. There is no such thing as an irrelevant parent.
We may or may not understand them. We may or may not agree with them. We may or may not always like them. They may or may not be the parents we wish we’d had, but they are the parents we got. And no matter how they came to be our parents, we need them to want us, to accept us, to love us unconditionally.
I have yet to meet a person for whom this was not the case. I have met plenty who denied the accuracy of this assertion, sometimes vehemently. More often than not, however, after painstaking introspection, they too concede this to be true. So often we minimize or deny the importance of that which we don’t believe we have, don’t believe we deserve, or don’t believe we can get.
Viewing parents as godlike is typical, especially during early childhood when we have a naive understanding of the world. We see them as omniscient, omnipotent beings upon whom we rely to provide for all our needs. A principal maturational challenge is coming to terms with the fact that our parents are mere mortals. Their shortcomings are not of our making, nor are they the result of something lacking in us. Their deficits, their mistakes, their shame or guilt, are not ours.
Knowing we have parents is not the same thing as knowing our parents. By calling them mother and father, we take for granted we know them. But as Carl Safina reminds us, “Labels often make us feel as if we know and understand things we don’t know, don’t understand. Labels sometimes cause us to stop observing, stop paying attention.”
My parents had known me all my life, but I had only known them for a fraction of theirs. They had once been children with parents of their own. They had siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, friends, and in-laws whose impact on their lives was salient in both desirable and undesirable ways. They had struggled with making good choices, succeeding at times while failing at others. They had a history separately as well as together that did not include me.
Throughout college and graduate school, I was repeatedly asked to conduct comprehensive studies of my own family. Constructing family trees, interviewing family members and friends, examining photographs and letters, collecting personal accounts and stories allowed me to create a more complete portrait of the individuals who populated my lifescape, especially my parents. These projects were an incentive to delve into the lives of those who had made mine possible. Knowing who I came from was crucial to knowing myself.
Getting to know my parents as people was an invaluable exercise. Acknowledging my parents’ humanness was liberating, allowing me to relate to them in a more egalitarian manner. They were not the infallible, all-knowing, all-powerful beings of my childhood. I could admire, respect, and love them without feeling compelled to become a younger version of them. Choosing to do things differently from them was not a sign of disloyalty or rebellion, but of individuation. It was not necessary to reject outright who they were in order to become myself.
Discovering who my parents were before they had children provided insight into how they came to be the parents I knew. Learning how their past had shaped the parents they became made it easier to understand the choices they made. That doesn’t mean I agreed with all their choices or practices. Understanding does not guarantee agreement or approval. Explaining why something was done should not be confused with excusing it.
Feeling gratitude for the parents I had did not require denying that they had made mistakes. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. Forgiving my parents for not always being the parents I needed was a gift I chose to give them as well as myself. Hopefully my children will find it in their hearts to do the same.
