Reverse is not an option

I was about twenty when I first watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a hilarious comedy directed by John Hughes, about a popular high school senior (a young fresh-faced Matthew Broderick) who feigns illness and spends a wild day with friends in Chicago.  It’s a movie about fun, freedom and rebellion —an attractive theme to twenty-year olds who are just beginning their path towards independence and the adventure of challenging authority.  At that age, you’re just getting a taste of life's larger choices – the choices to conform or not, to adhere to age old rules or not.  It’s a great time –where there’s  freedom and the feeling of invincibility.  Ferris Bueller magnifies that special time of life well.

John Hughes was genius at making stereotypes work while showcasing the nuance, angst and humor of teenage life.  My friends and I later watched Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful – all released between 1984-1987 -- exactly when we were “coming of age.”  I don’t think there’s another director that captured so much for a generation in such short time span.
 
At the end of 1991, I watched Father of the Bride (Steve Martin played the father, George Banks) just after John and I got married.   I teared up many times during the movie, because the themes (a father trying to let go of a daughter who was getting married) touched me where I was that particular day.  Though I was thrilled to be married and excited about my journey with John, I was also well aware that in the gaining of something wonderful, there was a corresponding loss.  

In the five years between Ferris Bueller and Father of the Bride, I’d become an adult.

Recently, I sat with my girls and laughed once again at Ferris’ antics, remembering myself years ago when I was thoroughly amused by his boldness, contagious sense of adventure, willingness to embrace everything with energy and passion (art, good food, a parade, a ballgame), and his somehow goofy and touchingly philosophical moments.  I still love Ferris, maybe even more now that I’m a mom.

Even through our laughter, I realized my girls are just entering the adventure of pre-adulthood and are on the cusp of barreling headlong into life’s inexplicable twists, turns and responsibilities.  Poignancy, nuance and tears of joy are concepts for older people - lost on the elementary-aged set - just beginning to be grasped by my teenaged daughters.  

When I see them wrestling with these concepts while gaining more independence, I can’t help but notice their corresponding loss of innocence.  There – right on the couch giggling at Ferris driving the Ferrari in reverse to decrease the miles on the odometer – I thought about the bittersweet nature of this journey called parenting.  When the girls have their own adventures, they’ll change.  Of course, driving backward doesn’t help, it doesn’t get rid of the problem, but simply causes new ones.

So the option is for them to plunge forward, into the unknown.  And I’ll be right here offering guidance, love and hopefully a bit of wisdom, as someone who’s lived these scenes before…