How well do we really know our people? I presume that most of us think we know our loved ones inside and out, especially our children or parents. But do we really know people beyond the micro versions they present to us?

Growing up, I truly believed that I knew my parents. Their names were Alan and Susan. They owned a nursery, landscaped, attended church, sang in the choir, enjoyed coffee, wine and fine dining, and also watched “Seinfeld.” Every so often, they took vacations or weekend trips to destinations that met their interests. They had friends and acquaintances, but above all, they had children, commonly known as me and my siblings. What else was there to know?

It goes without saying that there was a young man or woman who existed before these adults I refer to as Mom and Alan, but I didn’t know them. I didn’t know the brown-eyed girl who attended MUW or the curly-headed young man who longed to be a landscaper. They were just parents to me, my parents.

This summer break, it dawned on me that my children look at Shannon and me the same way I did my parents. Depending on which child you ask, we are simply Mom and Dad, or Mom and Clay, yet at the end of the day, we’re just the parents who occupy the home. We pay the bills, cook the meals, work, play and rest. Our roles are a touch cliché, but a good cliché, the one that makes a house into a home.

For the better part of summer break, each of us has filled our roles dutifully. Not much has been left to question. That was until the other day, when an inviting kitchen counter found four of us gathered around it, talking about anything besides what’s for dinner.

I’m not real sure how it began, but we stumbled upon discussing the nuances that shape a person. Everything from victories and losses to trauma and healing were tossed around and broken down. The kids laughed at the image of a young me playing high school soccer and smirked at the continuity of Shannon’s perfectionism from college into today. The more we shared, the more we learned about the very people we live with every day.

There’s no shame in admitting that we probably only know about 50% of what makes up the people we love. Just think about all of the fears, dreams and crazy little thoughts we all carry around and never turn into words. We spend so much of our waking hours just answering the call of life.

So when someone we love invites us into their little world, it’s probably not a bad idea to join them.

I would never divulge the details of what our children share with us, but their emotions are worth sharing, and quite touching for that matter.

Our daughter Reagan is in a sorority and attends Ole Miss, and our youngest son Landon is preparing to attend MSMS this year. Although the polarity of their lives equates to the red and black posts on a car battery, their confident yet fragile balance in this world appears strikingly the same.

That day in our kitchen, those two siblings talked of their anxieties, sadness, insecurities and dreams. They asked us questions of mine and Shannon’s youth and of our fears when we were young. They made declarations of what they will “never do,” to which we suggested making haste with such bold statements. Vulnerability shone through the broken pieces of each of us, as our presence made one another whole.

It’s a special thing, that which the long, hot days and lazy nights of summer can summon between a parent and child.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I concur. When we’re apart from our loved ones, we strangely feel closer. We deliver our words carefully, cloaking them in kindness and love, deliberately choosing our conversations in order to make them count. But in one another’s company, we break from the world and break open our hearts. In the presence of love, we can be broken together.

What a feeling it is to come to someone while weak, with zero expectations of being strong. I think the purpose of family is not to make one another happy, but to make one another honest. We often think of honesty as being the telling of truths, and while correct, I also believe that honesty is vulnerability.

To quote Edgar Allan Poe: “Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.”

We never know the value of a moment until it’s gone, so we should celebrate our vulnerable moments and be broken, together.

Clay Bowen is a Columbus native who cooked professionally as a chef in fine dining for 12 years and appeared on the third season of Top Chef. He is also a licensed landscape horticulturist. Email him at [email protected].

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