In the mid-1990’s, back when I was in high school, there was a song that was very popular on the radio called “Kiss The Rain.” The singer, Billie Myers, released the song as her first single from an album that was called “Growing, Pains,” and though she had a minor hit with “Tell Me” shortly afterward, she remains best known for that song alone, and it somewhat surprises me that the song is still somewhat well known, being about a lover’s desire for her partner to remain loyal despite the distance that separates them, advising him to kiss the rain if he misses her kisses when they are far away.

There are many singers who have written about the stress of distance on relationships. In my life, for a variety of reasons, most of my relationships have been long distance. In some ways, the distance helped to make things more comfortable, given that I am a rather anxious and nervous person by nature when it comes to relationships, but all the same I think that the distance in many ways has hindered me from some of the personal growth that would have been reasonable to expect of someone my age who is not completely hopeless when it comes to emotional maturity or social skills, even if I am definitely a late bloomer as far as that goes (had I been an early bloomer, I think it unlikely that I would still be single). To be certain, my backwardness, awkwardness, and inexperience have caused me a fair amount of embarrassment and trouble in my life.

Often I wonder about the proper balance that parents need to maintain when it comes to their teens and young adult offspring. What kind of support and encouragement, and what kind of granting of freedom to make mistakes and learn from them leads both to the most mature and capable young people as well as the best long-term relationships? By and large, strong willed young people (and that is certainly true of me) are generally not going to put up with micromanaging parents, no matter how difficult our straits and how modest our resources. However, I know I definitely lament the distance between my only surviving parent and I, and I regret that my father and I never managed to bridge the distance between us or talk about the serious issues that we both had to wrestle with from our family legacy. As parenting is a tricky balance, and as it is an area I have no personal experience in, I try to be charitable to my own family, recognizing that we all have probably done just about the best we could, even if that has not always seemed very good.

The longer I have lived, though, the more I have become sensitive to the difficulty of the problem as it relates to others. Part of the difficulty rests in the fact that there are no one-size-fits-all techniques when it comes to ensuring success. No matter how driven and how motivated a young person may be to succeed, and how well-intentioned his (or her) parents may be, there are any number of difficulties in situation and temperament that may cause severe problems in life. If a young person can grow to young adulthood without addictions, serious errors in personal conduct (especially in relationships), or a crippling debt burden, then their success at doing so may be counted as nothing short of miraculous. But young people cannot be protected from such problems, and parents have a responsibility to encourage even as they strive not to enable or meddle, in the hope that as young people grow up and make their own way in the world (which they are going to do anyway, whether their parents like it or support it or not) that those young people will always want to and be comfortable in keeping a strong relationship with their parents even after they are adults. All too often the distance is difficult to bridge, a distance that is more than just the miles, but also the difficulties in communicating between one heart and mind and another who are so very different, even if they feel they should be so much more in harmony.