PenPenWrites

I am having coffee with Jeannie–she's a friend of a friend that I haven't seen in a while. We are catching up by swapping tales of what our kids are up to. Her son is graduating from
college with a major in costume design. Neither she nor the child’s father is into anything even remotely artistic. She’s an occupational therapist;
 he’s an accountant. But thanks to her son's interest, she’s learned a
lot in the past few years about what goes into bringing a play from script to
stage. She’s gone to New York with her son to see shows on and off Broadway—something
she never did before. Her son hopes to get into a special internship program in
New York City that will give him a boost up his career path.

Her story reminds me of the days when our children lived at
home and developed interests outside of ours. Alpha Daughter played
the piano competitively; Uber son swam in a league of community swimming pools. We learned a lot about the back
stroke [his specialty] and upper body development; about Mozart Rondo alla Turka
competitions and how the pianist has to concentrate the mind as well as the
fingers. We miss those universes now that our little participants have grown up and
moved on. But like Jeannie's son, their careers have taken Paterfamilias and I into fields quite diverse from
our own. This time around, we’re still
standers-by who,
once again, get to learn all the fascinating details of a new and different universes—only this
time, our children are our teachers. The care we have to take is not to be a know-it-all. It's easy
enough–it may be the only way to connect–to apply our general wisdoms
[and prejudices] to their fields, but we have to do so with care and
tact. Otherwise, it's another minefield.