I wrote this three years ago as my daughter was leaving for college. As I’ve mentioned, I write as a means of therapy and getting this down on paper did the trick for me. I’ve gotten some requests to publish it again so if it can help any of you as your child leaves the nest then read on.
It’s here. The time has come. The moment that we’ve dreaded while simultaneously employing painstaking diligence to prepare our kids for college is not just haunting us, but it’s this week. It’s now.
The separation of parent and child is a bruise to the heart, a lump in your throat and downright painful at best. But we have to remember that it was us who pushed and prodded in getting them to this monumental time of parting. From the beginning, we insisted on good manners, demanded respect, encouraged kindness to all and begged for earlier bedtimes. Most recently though, we expected even more community service hours, one more ACT tutoring session, lots of school involvement and maybe have a part-time job to boot. All this great advice so that they get accepted to their dream college, live the dreamiest four years, make dreamy new friends while we sit at home mourning their footsteps, door slamming, fighting with their siblings and leaving the refrigerator door open.
Watching my daughter prepare for the time she’ll one day come to realize as the most carefree and exciting years she’ll have is my own rite of passage. I begin to recall so many memories of my own four years away. The small dorm rooms, sharing a phone with four people, collecting quarters for laundry, bad dates, good dates, having a root canal for the first time while away, learning how to manage my time, sun tanning on the roof of my sorority house (glossed in baby oil), learning how to cook in my apartment, balancing my first checkbook, knowing which library floors were best for socializing and which were best for studying, dealing with girl drama on my own and most importantly making the best and most cherished friendships that still carry on.
All of these moments, memories, milestones and mistakes I made are all part of the woman I am today. So objectively, why is this so hard? It’s absurd. Yet emotionally it’s killing me. If there is such a thing as heartstrings, mine are shredding.
Not only do I think of all the things I’ll miss doing with her, which is almost everything, (she’s the kid that goes grocery shopping with me just to keep me company) but I dread how much our home life will change. I’ll now have a testosterone dominate household as well as a very quiet one. I’m crazy curious about everything in her future. I have enough ‘what ifs’ to send me to the loony bin. I have grown to love her very closest friends. How will I ever get to know her new BFF’s? Will they be good people? Can she trust them? Should I trust them? What if she gets caught using a fake ID? (I’m not stupid; I’m realistic.) I wonder what her mistakes will be. What will she succeed at? What classes will she love and/or hate? I imagine her at the school cafeteria asking them for no blue cheese, bacon, avocado or tomato in her salad and getting laughed at. Seriously I am worried that her roommate, with whom she’s never met, will want to change rooms because my daughter is a slob of the highest order. Will she change her sheets? Ever? How will she fit 17 pairs of shoes in her dorm room? Admittedly, my list of worries and imagined scenarios goes on and on and on. I’m pathetic.
So besides a higher dose of Lexapro, I’ve pulled my big girl panties (granny panties) up and took some time to reflect and really dig inside about what this next stage in our lives really means. I realized (what I already knew), that in the 18 years that I’ve spent raising, parenting, mentoring, listening, yelling and preparing her for this new chapter in her life, I’ve got an incredibly awesome kid. Our relationship is a bond that certainly won’t break because we’re apart, it’ll just be different. Different is good, it’s how we adapt and accept the differences that are important.
We can SCEFT! My own anagram for Skype, Call, Email, Facebook and Text. I can stay up late facebook stalking her new BFFs, her dates, both good and bad. I can rely on listening to her tone of voice and the silences in between sentences to gauge her moods so that my intuition with her stays sharp. I have to believe and trust she’ll figure out all the things I had to 20+ years ago and I know she is way smarter than I am, so it’ll be a breeze. I trust that her mistakes will make her stronger and wiser. I’m certain that the hundreds of invisible tools (respect, kindness, safety, etc) that are in her invisible toolbox will get used, some more than others, and that in her heart she always knows that it was her parents who put them there.
So I’m putting on a happy face, because I am happy. To know how exceptional her next four years will be should make any parent happy if not jealous. They’ll adapt to college life and we’ll adapt at home. If we accept this venture with gusto and pride, our kids will emulate that same feeling. Hopefully then, they’ll one day remember to share that emotion with their own kids and carry on what we’ve started.
With that, I send her off with love, hugs and kisses and the assurance that she’ll soon grow into the person she’s meant to be, and I too, will be the mom I am meant to be.
Lauren Margolin
www.goodbookfairy.com
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