Somewhere in our early teen years it's inevitable that our parents become sources of great embarrassment to us, held accountable for everything they are and aren't, could've been or should never be. Before things can get to that stage, though, it sometimes goes the other direction. We realize, even if we can't articulate it with the same sharpness with which we sense it, that once the bloom is off the earliest years of childhood, we stand revealed as something our parents are mortified to have created.