More: When you are growing up, you go through a phase when you want to be demonstrate your self-reliance, when you want people to know you aren’t dependent upon your parents for every littlest of things. But this assertion of your self-dependence can cause some heartache to your parents. It can make them feel you have no more need for them. No matter how much you love them, or are attached to them, it can always scare them to think they might have exhausted their “utility” in your life.

Some parents cope with this phase better than do some others. They understand and accept this phase as natural and necessary progression. Others take it much harder. But this phase has to be lived. You need to become independent for your own good, and for your parents’. You need to withdraw from their envelope if they don’t withdraw it themselves. But then, there comes a time when you have grown enough, when you have learned, and practised, and asserted enough. And then you need not be afraid of becoming dependent, or of being perceived as such. Then, you need be concerned only about letting your parents know that they are still as needed and wanted as they’ve always been. That they may continue to believe they still have more than their love and wealth to offer.

“When you’re old enough, and your dad sometime reaches for your hand to walk you across the road, let him. It’ll reassure him he’s still the father.”

(c) Mickey Kumra