Gruesome Things You May Find Out About Your Adult Children

Maybe it's time for YOU to throw a tantrum.

I hadn’t been up two minutes this morning before getting a Bad News Double Whammy.

First, my agent emailed to let me know a book proposal I’d put together had been rejected by the publisher.

Second, I found out my son’s been keeping a Confederate flag in his garage.

The proposal rejection I can handle. Being a professional writer sucks beyond the telling of it, but I’m used to taking a punch. Yes, I needed the money, but it’s more than that. Due to finances and the pandemic, I haven’t seen my family is two long years. I live in Italy; they live in Houston. It’s too far to swim.

Also, it looks as though I’d better hot-foot it over there because MY SON HAS A CONFEDERATE FLAG IN HIS GARAGE.

I discovered this after my daughter sent a text telling me she’d ripped it off the wall and stuffed it inside a box. This is exactly what I would have done. I’m grateful to have eyes and ears on the ground, especially hers, because she’s a smart, awesome young woman. But my son isn’t a Confederate-flag-waving sort. Frankly, I was so shocked to hear of it. I read her message four times, trying to absorb this really unpleasant new dimension to my son’s adult life. I’d just woken up. Was I dreaming?

My son is twenty-five and my daughter is twenty. I raised my kids to think for themselves, and they do, believe me. Perhaps, it was a mistake. If so, it’s not the first one I’ve made as a parent. Parenting, as you will discover (if you’re planning to have kids), is a never-ending saga of tragic misfires and devastating losses: lost shoes, lost orthodontic retainers, lost tempers, lost identities. You’re a parent. You don’t have an identity anymore. You’re the mother/father of [insert name of child here] who will grow up and nail a Confederate flag to the wall.

Naively, we think we’re having kids. We’re not. We’re having people. And people grow up and do all kinds of stupid, unconscionable things. My kids were raised in a woke household. I myself am so flamingly liberal, I bleed pink. But that may be the point, actually. Your brighter children will always want to establish an identity that is wholly separate from yours. So it is with my son.

We are close. Really close. Last night, we talked for three hours on the phone, and that’s not a one-off. He knows I adore him. As a self-described “Constitutional Conservative,” he sees the world differently than I do, but he’s neither sexist nor racist, and he does listen.

So what was up with that flag?

Answering that question required taking a hard look at other young men his age. You’d be surprised to learn how many white men fresh out of adolescence swing right politically, at least for a time. Even my liberal boyfriend John went through a talk radio/Bob Grant/Conservative phase before experiencing his humanitarian epiphany. But my son’s in Texas. I don’t think there are too many epiphanies just lying around out there.

Personal freedom looms large in my son’s worldview. If you tell him no, he’s still quite young enough to put up his dukes and fight. I remember being much the same way when I was his age. My crop tops and belly-baring low-rise jeans were a stiff middle finger to everyone who told me not to dress so provocatively.

But the flag horrifies me. I won’t lie. My daughter tells me that after grumbling about some “butt-hurt liberal snowflake” stealing his flag, my son installed a camera with a glowing red light to deter any future thefts.

I have friends whose Biden signs were pilfered nightly out of their front yards. This is where we’re at now as a country. Yay, us!

I told my daughter to burn that flag. I hope she does. But as far as forcing my son to see the error of his ways, that’s a stickier and more perilous process. How well did you handle it when you were in your twenties and your parents told you how to live your life? Yeah, me neither. That’s why shutting my mouth may be the better part of maternal valor.

That’s so much harder than you think. We’ve been telling our kids what to do since the cradle. Learning to keep your trap shut, not to judge, not to gently or ungently criticize … this is post-doctorate-level parenting. Am I capable of it? We’ll see.

Push too hard, and I lose him. Don’t push hard enough, and he’s running down to Guns N’ Ammo to buy another flag. Yet there’s that third possibility, which is the most daunting one of all: Have a little faith that life will teach him what he’s no longer willing to learn from me.

That flag doesn’t mean what he thinks it means, which is Rebellion Against Tyranny, especially against butt-hurt liberal snowflakes like Mom. It’s just ugly. And racist. And gross. You’d think his Black friends would tell him that. Maybe they will.

Until then, I’m wiring my jaw shut. I’m counting to ten and trying to remember what it was like being clueless and twenty-five but thinking I had all the answers.

Now, if only I could be that Zen Master about the insipid, moronic publisher that rejected my book proposal ….

How about you? Got any adult children? What’s your most recent war story? Leave your comments below.