When my kids were little, and the weekly grocery trip was a minor expedition, there was a game that they liked to play. We would get to the paper products aisle, the rows of tall shelving holding the packages of toilet paper and paper towels, and they would find an empty spot on one of the bottom shelves. Then they would clamber in and sit with their knees drawn up, giggling in anticipation.

My role in the game was to scan the shelves intently, as though trying to find something very specific. When my eyes would eventually fall on the grinning child, I had to exclaim in happy surprise – “Oh! Just what I was looking for! A (fill in child’s name) was exactly what I was looking for!” Then I would pick them up, out of the shelving, and carry them towards the buggy.

As you can probably imagine, my kids would have played this game for hours.

I thought about that game just recently as I listened to one of the no-longer-kids tell me about something that had happened to them at work. I was struck by their mature assessment of the situation, by their kindness and empathy. And suddenly that little grocery store game popped into my mind. Exactly what I was looking for!

That’s the joy of no-longer-kids. After years of scanning the shelves – looking past the self-centeredness of childhood, trying not to scrutinize the morass of adolescence too closely, blinking in surprise at the fledgling adult emerging – you realize that the person standing before you IS exactly what you were looking for.

The thing is, I got it wrong for so many years. When they were little, I thought I was looking for perfection. I spent so much time when they were small making sure they looked just right and teaching them the correct things to say. I cringed each time they forgot their “pleases” and “thank yous” and each time they just stared mutely at someone speaking to them.

I tried to give them healthy, balanced meals and wrung my hands in frustration when they refused the vegetables and picked at the other foods. Then I berated myself for caving in and giving them graham crackers. This was no way to achieve perfection.

Eventually, I realized that perfection wasn’t what I was looking for. I’m awfully far from perfect myself. Why would I look for that in my children?

Then I thought I was looking for brilliance or wild success or amazing achievement. That was what I was supposed to hope for as a parent, wasn’t it? I took them to classes and to events and to games and to recitals. I reminded them to practice and to do their best and to have fun, unless not participating was their idea of fun and then forget fun and just practice doing their best.

Turns out that none of my children are super geniuses. There, I said it. My young-mother self would be aghast, but it’s the truth. Neither are any of them world-class athletes. Apparently, having two parents with the combined athletic abilities of a banana slug does not increase your chances of being an incredible athlete. Crazy how that works.

That’s not to say that each of them isn’t brilliant in their own unique way. And it remains to be seen if they might be wildly successfully at something or achieve amazing things. But I realized that it’s not what I was looking for.

I was really just looking for someone who I always suspected was there, from the very first time I saw each of them. Someone funny and serious and mature and silly and just a little odd-ducky. Someone empathetic and kind and full of their own interests. Someone with their own imperfections and handicaps to overcome.

Yesterday at church, I spoke with a young mother. She had an infant sleeping in a carrier on her chest and was watching a kindergarten-aged sibling being corralled by his father. There was another child between those two, she said.

Oh, that’s about the age difference of my children, I said. Of course, they’re all grown up now, I said. Her face lit up at the thought of how wonderful that must be – and by wonderful, I mean restful.

Another mother of young-adult children was there, too. We assured her – in, I’m afraid, that rather supercilious way of someone who’s already taken that ride and seen that show – that grown children brought a whole different kind of difficulty.

But I wish I had conveyed to her some of the joy that comes with grown children. Because I have taken the ride. I have seen the show. I’ve watched them struggle and stumble. I’ve watched as they’ve wounded themselves with their own decisions. I’ve watched as the world has wounded them.

I’ve watched them persevere. I’ve watched them become people who continue to be themselves despite what the world thinks of them.

Isn’t that just the best kind of people? Exactly what I was looking for.