Getting Over the Good Old Days

Zack and me, circa 1990.

You never know when you'll learn something new. In fact, sometimes that "Eureka!" moment comes from the unlikeliest of places. For me, it arrived this morning as I stepped out of the shower and heard a bit of dialog from an old sitcom I never even watched back when it was popular. The TV in the next room was tuned to "Frasier," a show about a radio shrink. Blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever, laugh track, laugh track. Then Frasier, the doctor, responded to a caller who was having trouble relating to her 22-year-old daughter as an adult: "We tend to freeze people in the moment of time when we were most comfortable with the relationship." Suddenly I understood: I do that with my own son!

Zack is 25 now, but I still see him as that adorable, sweet, almost edible little boy who--and here's the most important part--loved me to pieces. I gotta stop doing that. It's hard to admit that little boy is gone forever--as dead as if he had actually died, God forbid a million times. And while the man he is today is certainly fabulous, and smart and handsome and talented, and a lot of other things, he's not "cute" or "adorable." And if at times he respects me, or finds me interesting and even intelligent--I can dream, can't I?--he sure doesn't love me to pieces.

Maybe I should start watching more TV shows. (At least the ones about shrinks.)