Unwashed hair. Unkempt clothes. A beer belly and then some. When our grown children don't look their best--not even close to it--it's upsetting. Embarrassing. Annoying. Is it a blow to the pride?--you want to show them off but here they are looking down at the heels. Is it plain old materialism?--they should be showcasing the best and most expensive.
I got an insight into what it could be from a friend who just went through a bout of the unkempts.
She had rented a seaside house for the summer and invited her son and his latest girlfriend to come visit--make it their vacation. But it was a strangely uncomfortable visit--they kept to themselves and were quite distant. And all of this was made worse by the son's appearance. He was badly in need of a haircut and the clothes he wore were frayed--buttons missing, tee shirts ripped. For my friend, it became the focus of everything that was going wrong. "He looked like a loser," she says, and she is close to tears when she says it.
And there's where I think she put her finger on the issue: It's deeply disturbing when our kids look lousy. The fear is, they may not be doing well. They may be failing in life. We don't want this for them. We want life to go well for them.
In my friend's case, her son had been eased out of a business he had started with friends. He had been out of work for several months and had just come from some unpromising job interviews. His appearance spoke volumes about how he felt about himself. And that's why it was so depressing. We are, as the old adage goes, only as happy as our unhappiest child.
