My son and I aren’t best friends

Facebook is filled with motherly comments, glowing about their adult children who are their BFFs. I’m envious when I read those posts, wondering why my child and I aren’t best friends. Am I doing something wrong?

Blake and I are friendly but I’m not even sure we’re . . . friends. We like each other, love each other, respect each other, listen to each other’s stories. But we don’t divulge intimacies like my friends and I do.

Our conversations cover the usual – the humor and trials of work and family life, politics, solutions for practical matters. There’s plenty of back-and-forth. Sometimes we agree, sometimes not. Either way, he speaks to me directly, occasionally bluntly. And these days, we often exchange advice on issues about which one of us is more knowledgeable than the other.

On luxuriously long video chats, Blake and my daughter-in-law Thanh regularly share themselves and son Bastion with Dad and me. These chats allow the little one, his grandma, and great-grandpa to get to know each other. And they make me appreciate Bastion’s parents even more. But that doesn’t make my son and I BFFs.

When I mentioned some of these thoughts, Thanh suggested it might be the difference between mother-son and mother-daughter relationships. Yes, I agreed, most of the FB comments seem to be by mothers about their daughters. I felt better.

Blake agreed that “friendship” doesn’t describe our relationship accurately. “We’re not friends, Mom, but we’re not not friends either,” he said. “We do things that friends do – our trip to Big Bend, having a drink together. It’s just a different space.”

He added that circumstances have created some distance. Literally. We live about 1500 miles apart. Plus, he and Thanh have had time-consuming jobs, and now parental responsibilities. That makes it difficult for us to spend relaxed time together. It’s especially frustrating this year when I can’t visit with toddler Bastion, who’ll probably be a foot taller by the time I’m able to squeeze him and kiss that precious little neck.

Then there’s the fact that Blake and Thanh have been a couple since their freshman years at UNC, so they’ve turned to each other their entire adult lives. She’s his BFF, and so far, their lives have chugged along pretty smoothly. I’d like to believe that Blake just hasn’t needed to rely on me emotionally.

I’ll end with a quote from Dorothy Canfield Fisher that I’d like to believe is true for my son and me . . . .

“A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”

I’m good with that.