Adventures in Parenting Your Grown Children

Grown-up kids are great. They are smart, care about their money (and yours, at least while they're still in college), are doing amazing things, and are living good, productive lives. It does a mom's heart good.

My grown-up kids are all those things, except that they live anywhere from 1800-4800 miles away, so I don't always get all the details of those good lives they are living. I have to remember to ask about the details because it's just not a habit for them to share everything that's going on. I get that, but sometimes I do shake my head a little. Moms want to know some stuff, you know?


Just this last week, Sam was traveling to Texas for a wrestling meet. We knew he was working out with the BYU Wrestling Club, and knew about this trip, but not the details. I try not to pry and make my kids feel like I need to know all their business, so I didn't. Suddenly, as he was at the airport to leave, it came into focus: The reason he was going to Texas was that he qualified (this is a big deal) for the Club Nationals. Yes, the National College Wrestling Association has a whole rankings and tournament system for Club teams and this son came in first at a regional tourney and was going to wrestle at the National level.

What? I was so excited and he was so low key. A SMH moment for sure. But no matter. I absorbed the news, spread it around to the rest of the family and the nicest thing happened. One of those things that gives big-time reassurance that you live in a good world: My whole little tribe immediately came together in the virtual world to support Sam. There was just no question, instead there was sincere interest and finding out if the tourney was being covered online and paying money to get the live coverage and possibly actual thousands of texts and skype calls and streaming of chunky live videos. We became his cheering section from MD, Utah and Arizona and it was really kind of cool. We discussed his moves and strategy and texted and talked to him between his matches. We looked up his competitors and just got into the whole thing. People watched the videos and rejoiced with us and it was so dang fun.

He did well enough to make a momma proud and a competitive warrior frustrated (won-lost-won-lost-no place). I don't know if he has yet reached the conclusion that this was a great experience, because it's rough to end on a loss, but for me the big memories will be seeing him do his best in a BIG arena and the unity I felt among our family members, even with all the miles in between.

The fact is that if he'd told me sooner, I would have flown down there. In the absence of that option, we really did do the best we could and it mattered to me so very much that we could come together the way we did.

Families are awesome. In all the ways that word can mean.

Here's his first match if you're interested. In the background, on speakerphone, you can hear my dad in AZ, my son Jeff in UT, Eric and me.