Last week, my eleven-year-old grandson showed me a photo from my son’s wedding twenty years ago.
“Grandpa, you looked so different back then,” he said, squinting at the picture. “You were like… almost young.” Later that same day, I overheard my son on the phone telling someone I was “getting up there in years” and might need help with some yard work.
I’m sixty-four. Not exactly running marathons, but not ready for the retirement home either.
That got me thinking about this strange space we all occupy in our families. To my mother, before she passed, I was perpetually frozen somewhere around thirty-five, still that young man who needed reminding to eat properly.
To my sons, I’ve been “old” since they hit their twenties. And somewhere between those two versions exists the actual me, the one who’s still figuring things out, still changing, still becoming whoever I’m meant to be.
The parent lens: forever frozen in time
Have you ever noticed how parents seem to have selective memory when it comes to their kids? My mother used to introduce me to her friends as her “baby,” right up until I was in my fifties with gray hair and reading glasses. She’d tell stories about things I did when I was eight as if they happened yesterday, conveniently skipping over the forty-some years that followed.
Parents carry this idealized snapshot of who we were at our best, youngest, most potential-filled moment. It’s sweet, really, but it can also be suffocating. They remember the version of you before life got complicated, before you made mistakes, before you became whoever you are today.
I catch myself doing it with my own sons. When I look at them, successful men in their thirties with mortgages and minivans, part of me still sees those gap-toothed kids who thought I hung the moon. It’s not that I don’t recognize who they’ve become. It’s that the younger version is somehow more real to me, etched deeper into my heart.
The child lens: ancient from day one
Now flip the script. To our kids, we’ve been old since they developed consciousness. Remember being a kid and thinking thirty was ancient? Your parents seemed like they’d always existed in this fully formed adult state, complete with all the answers and an inexplicable love of documentaries.
My sons started seeing me as “old” probably when they hit their teenage years. Suddenly, my music was outdated, my references were from another era, and my advice was well-meaning but hopelessly out of touch. Now that they’re fathers themselves, they’ve softened a bit, but I’m still firmly in the “elderly parent” category in their minds.
What’s fascinating is watching them discover things I tried to tell them years ago. Just last month, one of them called me, exhausted after a sleepless night with his three-year-old, and said, “Dad, I finally get why you were always so tired when we were kids.” I wanted to say “I told you so,” but I just chuckled. Some lessons you have to learn yourself.
The invisible middle ground
So who are we really, caught between these two extremes? We’re the person having a midlife crisis our kids don’t know about and our parents wouldn’t understand. We’re the one dealing with aging bodies that our children think have always been this way and our parents still picture as young and spry.
During my thirty years in human resources, I watched countless people navigate this identity gap. They’d come into my office, struggling with caring for aging parents while raising teenagers, feeling pulled between being somebody’s child and somebody’s parent, never quite landing on just being themselves.
The truth is, the most authentic version of ourselves often goes unseen by the people who love us most. They’re too busy loving who we were or who they need us to be to see who we actually are right now, in this moment.
Breaking free from family mythology
Every family creates its own mythology. You’re assigned a role early on, and breaking free from it feels like betraying an unspoken contract. Maybe you’re the responsible one, the funny one, the dramatic one. These labels stick long after they stop being accurate, if they ever were.
After my father died when I was in my forties, I found myself reevaluating everything. Who was I without being someone’s son? The grief hit me harder than expected, partly because I realized how much of my identity was wrapped up in being the version of me my parents expected. It forced me to ask: what kind of man did I actually want to be, separate from anyone else’s expectations?
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, major life transitions have a way of shaking loose these old narratives. But you don’t need to wait for a crisis to start seeing yourself more clearly.
Finding yourself in the gap
Here’s what I’ve learned: that person trapped between your parents’ memories and your children’s assumptions? That’s where the real you lives. It’s messy and undefined, constantly shifting, never quite matching anyone’s expectations. And that’s exactly as it should be.
I see it now when I’m with my grandchildren. To them, I’ve always been “Grandpa,” gray-haired and full of stories. They don’t know about the young father who made mistakes, the middle-aged man who changed careers, or the person who still sometimes feels like he’s making it up as he goes along. And that’s okay.
What matters is that we know ourselves, that we give ourselves permission to be more than just someone’s child or someone’s parent. We’re allowed to surprise people, to change, to be inconsistent with the family story.
Closing thoughts
The beautiful paradox of family life is that the people who know us best might not really know us at all. They know versions of us, filtered through time and need and memory. And we do the same to them.
Maybe that’s not a bug but a feature. Maybe families need these simplified versions to function, these archetypal roles that give us something solid to push against or lean into. The key is remembering that we’re more than any single story our family tells about us.
So here’s my question for you: who would you be if you weren’t trying to be young enough for your parents or old enough for your kids? What would you do if you gave yourself permission to exist in that undefined space between their expectations?
That person in the middle, the one nobody quite sees? They might just be the most interesting version of you yet.
