Fact: I am not good at letting my children go.
Three years ago I sent my oldest to college and everyday after found things to put in a care-package to send him. There were postcards of home, clean socks, protein bars, pens, a ruler, and one mango. The mango was a sort of fruit-based-love-language after a family vacation to Costa Rica. I added it to the 15-pound care package full of odds and ends and mailed it off. It sat in the college mail processing center for a week, and then a few more days until my college freshman found time to pick it up. I picture him lugging a 15-pound box with nothing he really needed, and one overly ripe mango, across campus as the picture of my empty nest insanity. Or was it my love? Insanity or love; so often that is the maternal fine line that you only see once you have crossed it.
The truth is that children leaving the nest involves more emotional growth, self care, and resilience than bringing them home to the nest involves the first place. It’s really hard.
When you bring them home there are baby showers, family visits, and pediatrician advice. There are mommy-and-me groups and books aplenty.
When they leave the nest there is a gaping void of nothing. No more family, no more school and doctor visits, no more activities with other moms, and no books excepting the articles that tell you that you “just-need-to-get-your-own-life-you-washed-up-old-mother.” Or at least that’s how I read this great piece of useless advice.
I have my own life afterall. I have a career and hobbies. But, I also spent decades thinking, caring, loving, preparing, and worrying for three people. Does anyone need diaper change/bathroom or did we get our favorite stuffy/ipad/earbuds off the plane? Does everyone have breakfast/lunch/dinner EVERY day. Do they have pencils and rulers and paper or their chrome book charged up? Do they need laundry washed or a reminder to change their oil and clean out their car?
It wasn’t that I didn’t have my own life. It was that I had the lives of three people. And there is no way to replace that when two of the three leave. I am left holding just my own life in my hands, as I look around and take stock of what can only be described as a void.
I wonder if I did enough?
I work to expand my own one life to fill the void. I live a rich life and I am grateful. I take up crocheting and baking bread, I dive into my career, I get weirdly attached to my dog; insisting my husband leave a light on for him if we go out in the evening. I spend long hours with coffee staring out the window without anyone at home or anybody needing me.
But you can’t make one life into three and so I reach out- in the timeless tradition of mothers everywhere-and start to bug my children. My how the tables have turned.
“What are you doing this summer?”
“What are you doing now?”
“Have you thought about resumes/retirement planning/car insurance/getting married?”
“Want to come to church on Easter and take family photos?”
This last one is always met with a look of resignation that I can hear through the phone.
I don’t like the relationship. It doesn’t feel healthy. When did I become so desperate? Who am I here? Who am I supposed to be? How do I love them while letting them go? Do I call or not call? And where are all the instructional books now, you parenting expert smarty pants??
Am I loving them with a care package or boxing up my insanity for them to carry? It’s a fine line, and one I jump over and back a thousand times as they leave the nest.
Because it’s not about my love for them or their love for me. It’s not about getting my own life. The awful truth is: it is about giving them back their lives. They were on loan anyway. The richness of their company, their funny quirks and sense of humor, their goals and loves and challenges. I got to carry them for a while. Two rich and full lives that were not my own. And it was beautiful.
Then the day comes when you need to give those lives over to the rightful owners and there’s so much delight in your heart that it bursts with pride, and there’s so much heartbreak for a void that you know -deep down- that you can never replace. This is the truth of being a mother. Sitting and holding those two things with tears that are a mix of happy and sad.
Is it worth it? I wonder this as I see-through my wiser and weathered eyes-the new moms staring in pure adoration at their newly arrived babies and I feel the void.
The answer is a definite, “Yes,” even through the tears, because despite the loss at the end, the gift was dazzling.
Now, while I wait to see if my two best lives will someday experience the same dazzle, I’ll talk to my dog, practice my crocheting, and occasionally pester my grown children just so that they don’t forget that I am here. Here with a love so big it’s letting them go.