Get your tissues out for this one.

Close the Door on Childhood Gently
By Erma Bombeck

To thousands of families across this country, this is the summer of their discontent. Especially those with teenagers who just graduated from high school or college and are ready to move on.

There are emotions in the air that don’t have a name. Hostilities are afloat that don’t have rationale. Actions are exercised that don’t make sense.

The family that played together, prayed together and were raised together now get on each other’s nerves. What’s the matter with everybody?

A letter from Melissa, a graduating high school senior in Denver, offers an explanation. “My mother returned to working after being a housewife for 17 years. I was unprepared for this shock and didn’t take it very well. For 17 years I had someone there to give me aspirin if I was sick, make sure I ate right and do my laundry. Then she was gone.

“Lately, we have been having a lot of arguments. I now realize, after reading your book, why we have been arguing. When I was little all I wanted to do was grow up, and my mother thought I was growing too fast. Now all I want is to be 7 years old and have my bicycle back, and my mother is ready for me to grow up.”

Melissa said it pretty well.

What we’re talking about here is panic. Panic of parents who have just been fired from a job they thought would go on forever and panic from children who thought parents loved them so much they would never abandon them.

Everyone is running around trying to act cool so no one can see how scared they are.

The parents are questioning if they spent enough time with their children, taught them the right things, loved them enough. The kids are wondering if they can make it outside of the cocoon and where they will fit in. And what happens to them if they don’t.

Everyone responds with old standby—anger. “Just wait till you get out there in the real world, mister. You’ll get your eyes opened.”

“I’ll be glad when I’m out of this house and won’t have you on my back all the time telling me what to do.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if parents could look at their teenagers and say, “I want you to stay, but you can’t.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if teenagers could look at their parents and say, “I don’t want to leave, but I must.”

It’s so much better to close the door gently on childhood…than to slam it.