It arrived when I was most expecting it but least prepared to handle it: the parental obsolescence of adolescence.
It's inaccurate to say the kids don't need me, because they do. They simply don't have time for me outside of those very specific moments when they need only me.
I've become a hex wrench - critically useful for a very small number of highly specific occasions. When you need a parent, nothing else will do. When you don't, a parent can be an encumbrance (to say nothing of an embarrassment).
I've caught myself falling into the same traps my parents set so successfully: loaded language full of guilt and shame. Downcast looks when they try to let me down easy in saying that maybe we can do that activity (play some ping pong, grab a coffee, play that strategy game) later.
In those moments, we exchange roles briefly. I become the sullen teen disappointed that I can't have my fun in the moment.
It's obvious that they have school, SAT prep, extracurricular commitments, friends, or just need a bit of alone time to decompress from all of the other togetherness time. It's not hard to understand, it's just hard.
I recall chasing after our daughter at an airport on the way to fly to grandparents when she was a toddler. She was giggling as I chased her through the aisles until she bumped into the legs of a seated man dressed in a business suit.
He looked down at her, then looked up at me and said, "I love this age. They think you're God!"
It felt very creepy in a Gordon Gecko, lords of finance way at the time. Now I realize that if you strip away the distastefully MBA word choice, what Gordon meant was that there is an age at which you are the center of a child's universe, and it's a fleeting and precious time.
Having watched the center of gravity shift means adjusting from being the center to a new role as a distant satellite, occasionally catching a glimpse of something radiant that once revolved around you.
I've tried to watch myself when I revert to my dual parental languages of guilt and shame. Unsurprisingly, it's easy for me to spot in others, and harder to identify in myself.
One of the most useful adaptations is to cash out some of the memory dividend I've built up over the years.
Google photos sends me daily collections of pics (and the occasional video) from years ago, and I luxuriate in the memories of trips taken, family members who have passed and rivers I will never step in again.
I share select shots with my wife so that we can remember a time when the kids were less oppositional, less overcommitted, more available.
Last night we went out to dinner and I shared some of the photos from that morning's photographic trip down memory lane. The kids' eyes lit up as they recalled the enormous servings of ice cream we encountered in a small and picturesque northern California town during our pandemic road trip; the primeval redwood forest we hiked through; the waterfalls we encountered on the hiking trails; and the memorably tacky motel we detoured to (tiki torches and Polynesian theme around the lava rock hot tub) when our planned airbnb was unexpectedly caught in a fire evacuation zone.
Those shared memories overcame the distance of the present instantly, and soon we were laughing uncontrollably as invisible cords bound us tighter to our shared narrative with each retelling.