Listening to the Children

I pulled the trigger last night. It took me a while to come to terms with spending that amount of money, but I did it. Oh, it's not that much in the grand scheme of things, but it seems a lot to me to fork out more than $120 for two tickets to a concert.

Yes, The Rankins are coming to town early in February on their Reunion tour. Years ago, they were front and centre in bringing the Celtic sound to the rest of Canada – beyond the Maritimes. When I think Celtic music, I think Rankins. The first time that I heard another Celtic group, I was disappointed because they didn't sound like the Rankins. The ladies have somewhat nasally voices but produce a very fetching sound – to this poor man's ears anyway.

But when I first went to the Ticketmaster site early in the week, I entered a state of sticker shock – over $60 per ticket! It's a fair chuck of change when you consider that pretty well whatever we do must be multiplied by two because Cuppa and I do most things together. And Cuppa's not a big Rankins fan. It's not that she dislikes them; it's just that they don't grab her like they do me. They probably don’t grab most people as much as they grab me, but those of us who like'em really seem to like'em as they aren't finding it too difficult to attract an audience after an eight year absence from the scene.

And so … here's the point that I really wanted to get to in this post – the relationship between parents and adult children. You see, it was the kids who told us that we were a little out of touch and that $60 was rather cheap for a concert; they'd expect to pay closer to a hundred bucks for one of theirs, not that they go to concerts in these house-poor days, but you get my drift, I'm sure. I think you go to concerts when you're young and when you're older; in between times, you have other interests and obligations. It's how the wheel of life seems to turn.

Anyway, they felt free to offer their advice. We certainly didn't mind, and I took it. With adult children, it doesn't as easily work in reverse though, does it? I mean to say that there is something about the parent-child relationship that doesn't lend itself to parents giving too much advice to adult children. I suppose that children spend their first twenty years or so, establishing their own independent identities apart from parents and it's a pattern that's hard to reverse.

I'm just making an observation. It's not about me and my kids (do you hear that, kids?), for I was the same way. I felt it my duty to advise my parents by times, but I don't think that I would have welcomed their advice too very often. Like me with my kids, they seemed to readily accept my advice whether they chose to follow it or not. It seems to me that to some degree, at least, parents seem to be able to accept their grown-up children as full-fledged and equal adults, but parents are always parents.

Oh, I don't mean that we older ones can ever completely let go of our children, we have a vested interest. I also realize that there are those who forever treat adult children as children, but I think that, on the whole, it is true that it is more common for parents to willingly accept advice from adult children than vice versa. That's all I'm saying, apart from the fact that I have to double-check the spelling of vice versa every time I use it. I got it wrong btw; I originally wrote visa versa.

Or maybe I've got it all wrong and your family dynamics are different? What say you?