The old adage says that if we love something, we should set it free.
That saying runs through my mind these days, as I take my high school daughter to tour prospective colleges. For one day, she tries each campus on like an outfit, checking to see if it’s the right fit.
She leaves our house as a child, but when we get to these campuses — with sprawling quads and stately architecture — she is transformed into an adult, or rather a small seedling of an adult. I follow behind her, letting her lead the way with a false bravado she wears like a mask. I know her, and I see the strange mix of terror and excitement in her eyes. I wonder if she sees the same emotions in mine.
She is my last child, so each moment, however small, takes on a heavy weight of importance: the last First Day of School picture on the front porch, the last school dance. Each holiday, each weekend, I’m painfully aware that my time with her has an expiration date.
Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic. It’s not like I’ll never see her again once she goes to college. Her three older brothers who left before her still come back. I love their visits. But they are no longer my babies. They are grown men who pay rent and buy their own groceries.
Letting go has taken some practice. When they hand you an infant in the hospital, the baby instantly becomes an extension of your arms. I spent hours with my children practically glued into my arms whether they were asleep or awake. My arms held them during bedtime stories, and rocked them during long nights when a fever caused their angel-fine hair to stick to their sweaty foreheads. I helped them put on pajamas, I tied shoes. My arms guided the back of the bicycle seat when the training wheels came off. It was my arms they reached for when they learned to swim, then conquered the water slide at the pool.
Each year of parenting brings a tiny bit of heartache, as one precious stage gives way to the next. You become aware of the unrelenting march of time. There were times when I was so exhausted raising four little children that I longed for the day when they were older. Now that they are older, I would give anything for a time machine to take me back to just one day so I could feel their baby soft skin and hear their giggles, their first words, and even their cries.
My daughter walks ahead of me, wearing an effortlessly stylish outfit, even though I know she tried on three other outfits before deciding on this one. I command my brain to take a mental picture, this beautiful person on the brink of adulthood. She is a tender mix of confident young adult and vulnerable child, and I am both excited and apprehensive for this next chapter of her life. Letting go means I will no longer be there to catch her when she falls, or hug her when her heart gets broken. She will learn to navigate these things without me.
Time speeds up, then it slows down. I have one child in my care, but her days as a child are numbered. Besides, she’s no longer a child, not really. Her imagination is already decorating her future dorm room, then a sweet apartment. She will have plants to care for, and perhaps a sleepy cat on the windowsill.
My entire identity for the last almost three decades has been that of “Mom.” As my last child takes on the mantle of adulthood, I will take on a new mantle of my own: who that person is, outside of “Mom,” I haven’t fully discovered yet. It will take some time to get reacquainted.
The adage starts out “If you love something, set it free.” It ends this way: “If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.”
I don’t agree with the “never meant to be” part: I know these children were meant to be mine, safe in my embrace as little sprouts. But the job of parenting is not to keep the child encircled tightly in our arms forever. They grow and need more space, more light. I learned this the hard way, making mistakes, veering off the path, then correcting course over and over.
As a parent I’ve been opening my arms gradually. Time doesn’t make promises. But these arms have muscle memory. They will instinctively revert to a Mama Bear hug when the sprouts — all grown up — come back to me. For a visit, I mean. My welcome mat is always out.
