When children have grown and flown the nest, we parents yearn for ways to be together again. The best thing an adult child could give us is the gift of their presence, time, and conversation. In our case our older son Ben (now in his 30’s) lives in our city and happens to be generous with visits and attention – which we truly love.
One Christmas not that long ago, Ben had the most original, 2-part idea for a present for his father. First, he bought him a model airplane kit that they would build together. It was a B-25J Mitchell bomber. Ben explained that after the model was built, he’d take his dad to visit nearby Ellington Joint Reserve Base – where he’d learned they could actually ride together as passengers in a real one that was still-operational. Over the next weeks, when Ben had time from his busy job and life, he would stop by the house with his paint kit for an hour or two, and pull the model set out to make some progress on with his dad. We loved Ben’s thoughtful gift idea.
For our son, it was a fun and sentimental throwback to his childhood days of assembling toys, and for Paul, it afforded him conversation with his cherished son as a now-adult who was not in a rush to get somewhere. I really enjoyed being in the background to hear the conversations between the two. It was special to hear how father and son now engaged with one another during the parallel activity of building the model plane. They’ve not made it to the air force base yet but that day will come. It is sure to be a special time they’ll have together.
This experience gave me the idea to recommend that even if a child has not yet come to you with something like our son did, it would be easy for the other parent to drop a hint for them to come up with an activity that parent and child might both enjoy doing together.
You never know what nice things can emerge from those conversations.
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