Are these my children?

My limit is reached! My mood this Sunday afternoon is pitch black. I felt like writing today about the inspiring meeting with two entrepreneurs last week, but my mind is not in the mood. So after a good cry - how refreshing that is - I decide to write about my feelings of powerlessness as a parent.

'I guide my children to become independent, happy and successful adults.' This intention helps me to choose what I do or don't do. And how difficult the last one is with two adult twenty-somethings who, by necessity, both still live at home! I see more of them than I would like to, and it tests our relationship immensely.

For now, my house is also their home, where I live with my love Goran, work in my business, host friends and family and want all four of us to feel comfortable. I love them unconditionally, but for a while I am completely done with their behavior and the mess they make. 

"Where is my favorite black shirt?" I ask myself just a little too hysterically as I collect laundry on Sunday morning. Daughter dearest was wearing it last week at breakfast, so I snatch it from a pile right behind her room door. The mess there makes me even more grumpy.  
'I just grabbed that shirt from your room and am not happy from what I saw,' I tell her as she gets out of the shower. 'You were supposed to reorganize your room last month, remember?' she promises me it will be finished today. An hour later, I see her sitting on the bed among the mess, folding one tiny piece of clothing in slow motion with her phone in hand. At least she's doing something, I tell myself. Work in progress. It's her room and her life.

'Mom, my TV is still not working' my son shouts as he walks past my workroom an hour later. He came home around six this morning, didn't feel like coming to Grandpa's birthday party last night and is about to leave. His work in construction is hard, he is with friends a lot or lying in his bed. I grant him his own life, weekend and his rest, so promise to take a look at it. But because of the mountains of mail, receipts, half-done bags of chips and clothes in his room, I can't reach anything. On the hallway I freak out, tell him he can't behave the way he does. A moment later I hear the front door banging. I don't know what I find more upsetting, the mess he leaves like this, the worry we feel about him or the sadness that our contact is so poorly for a while. Ideally, I would give him a hug and help him get his papers and life in order. But he doesn't want that and it doesn't work. He is an adult, it is his life and he wants to do it himself, in his way and moment. 

And so now I sit and cry from helplessness and grief. 'Are these my children?' I ask myself. Their behavior and the choices they make are so different from me. Are they going to find their own place in the world? In this housing market, how will they find their own little house where they have to fix things up for themselves and can choose when to join their parents. Will they be happy at all? 

Fifteen minutes later I hear the front door, my son is back, brings me a cup of tea upstairs and leaves again after a volatile kiss on my cheek. 'Yes, they are my children,' my mother heart says wholeheartedly, shutting up the coach, fixer and control freak in me. And deep inside I feel the confidence that it will work out, the question is when and how but it will work out! They want to do it themselves and I believe in them. 

I am going downstairs, take a look at a small picture of my two little ones from the time they needed my care and poor myself and my husband a drink. ‘Cheers, to our healthy children who, with a little luck, will find their own homes and lives sometime in the next year.’