A few years ago, I stood in the doorway of my front door, watching my 19-year-old son Cody pack up his car and personal things, gearing up for a new adventure of college and life. While he was launching himself into the future, I slipped into
memories of the past. I knew it was a confident, competent, and independent
young man standing there packing his car, smiling and waving good-bye, but what I saw in my
heart was a quiet, quirky, tow-headed little boy.
On my thirtieth birthday Cody—then thirteen—gave me a miniature troll doll
wearing a t-shirt that said, “Thirty isn’t old if you’re a tree.” On my
Thirty-third birthday he gave me a card that read, “I know you feel like you’re
getting old, but cheer up, it could be worse”—and then on the inside—“you could
be pregnant!” Along with letters and cards from other family members and close
friends, I have stashed Cody's gifts of twisted humor in a cardboard box on an
upper shelf in my closet. Also in the box is a Melmac plate decorated with
his preschool-sized handprint, and a black-and-white spotted ceramic cow
turned into a refrigerator magnet. He gave me the cow for Mother’s Day when he
was four years old, proudly presented after a short day at pre-school. One day in a fit of mommy frustration I slammed the
refrigerator door and the magnet crashed to the tile floor and shattered. Cody was in another room when it happened, but I knew as I picked up the pieces that
it could just as easily have been his heart I had broken. I stuck all the pieces
back together with a mix of Krazy Glue and tears, and for years I left the
cracked cow on the refrigerator to remind myself how easy it is to hurt those we
love the most.
Not all Cody's gifts to me are in the keepsake box. The little hand made clay bowl, that he painted my favorite color that he made for me several years ago, sits upon my dresser in my bedroom. The
bright pumpkin orange salt shakers, with matching oil and vinegar vats I recieved from him one Christmas are still in their special place in my kitchen next to my stove. Sometimes he has
gifted me with acts of service. For one birthday he wired up my cheesy sound system and set
up a CD player for me in our living room; followed by some yummy french toast and milk, rarely have I enjoyed a gift more. Just this year, my first smart phone. I swear I don't know how I functioned before that gift.
I like talking logic and life with Cody. When he tells me I ought
to not do this or consider not doing that, I
momentarily think of myself as his peer rather than his middle-aged mom. But
that fantasy lasts as long as a hiccup, then I’m back to being a mom—which I
enjoy, except for the letting go part.
Letting go. Why is it that throwing your arms around your kids and hanging on
for dear life is a whole lot easier than releasing them? We work so hard to
raise our kids, you’d think we parents would be delighted when it’s finally time
to take a breather; but no, we want to keep those little tadpoles in our safety
net forever. Only an unnatural force of will allows us to set their shimmering
little selves free. I shouldn’t make it sound like
every parent does
this. Maybe it’s just me. I did read in a personality book that people of my
stripe tend to be linked to their children “with almost a psychic symbiosis.”
While I prefer to think that describes
a uniquely sensitive, soulful, and mutually beneficial bond, it may just mean I
border on the over-connected side of things. Fine. Did they have to make it
sound like something from a psycho-thriller?
At the bottom of one of the cards Cody gave me he wrote: “Thanks for letting
me grow up.” I knew why he wrote those words. Months earlier, he had flown alone to Europe to be a student ambassador. When I dropped him off at
the the airport, I wanted to wait at the airport until his plane took off. We were flying him out of a town that we had no family or friends and I was driving straight back to Midland, TX from the airport. I
knew that airport well enough to know that not every scheduled flight actually leaves.
What if Cody got stranded? What if he had to reschedule his flight? What if he
had to go and come back later? There would be nobody at home to call. He was only 15.
“I can handle it, Mom,” he said. “If something goes wrong, I’ll figure out
what needs to be done and I’ll do it. This isn’t a big deal.” I knew he was
right; I was clinging. So I left. But during the four-and-a-half-hour drive to
Midland, I pondered that scene at the airport. Why, I wondered, did I feel so
compelled to hang on to Cody? To protect him? When I got to Midland I wrote him
a letter, I told him
far more than any teenager would ever want to hear, but I figured if I had to
torture my heart over his precious little head the least he could do was hear me
out.
I told him that when a woman gives birth to a child, she knows that child is
literally dependent on her for life. If she doesn’t feed and clothe it, if she
doesn’t make sure it gets adequate sleep, if she doesn’t teach it not to run in
the street or put its hand in a flame or drink Draino it will die. As the child
gets older and learns to look before crossing the street and avoid the hot stuff
and drink grape soda, the mother hovers less and less; the growing child needs
increasing independence and the mother must gradually grant it (the key word
being
gradually). But then something awful happens in high school. The
move toward independence jumps into high gear as the teenager rushes fast and
furiously into adulthood. The mother who was responsible for giving that child
life and then protecting it (actively, passionately, with utter devotion) is
suddenly supposed to sit meekly in her rocking chair with her hands folded and
smile sweetly while she whispers,
Have at it, kid. I’m not sure that’s
exactly how I said it in the letter, but that was the general idea.
I told Cody I was proud of his strength and his sense of responsibility and
that I wanted to free him to enjoy his independence, but that I was a slow
learner. Sometimes I looked at him and I saw the little boy whom it was my job
to protect, and at those moments letting go seemed impossible; it was like
chopping myself in half. I once read that one of the results of giving birth is
that for the rest of her life a woman lives with her heart walking around
outside her body. It’s true. So sometimes I squeeze more tightly at the very
moment I should be relaxing my grip. I asked Cody to forgive me and to bear with
me as I practiced this part of being a mom.
For weeks I had been trying to prepare myself for this moment, knowing there
was far more emotion surrounding his leaving than I could handle in one brief
exit scene. If I didn’t let it out in spurts along the way, I’d burst my heart
standing right there on the curb. So I wandered in and out of his room. Spurt.
Fingered the prom garters and pictures on his dresser. Bigger spurt.
Baked oatmeal cookies and put them in the freezer. Half a spurt. Spurt. Bought him new sheets and a light quilt (then I
remembered he didn’t even have a bed). Spurt. Spurt. Washed eighteen loads of
laundry. Spurt. Dried them. Spurt. Folded them. Spurt. Folded more of them.
Spurt.
And suddenly I wasn’t spurting anymore. My darn heart was shooting a steady
stream.
It struck me as I went through my various letting go rituals that I had lived
for twenty years with a delusion—a defense mechanism designed to insulate me
from the unbearable thought that something awful might someday happen to my
kids. The delusion went like this:
If I love my kids deeply enough I will be
able to protect them from all harm. I don’t mean I consciously believed
this. But somewhere deep in the mushy places of my mother love I pretended it
was true. I remember an image that often came to my mind when my children were
little: that even if they got desperately ill, if I held them tightly enough the
power of my love could infuse life and health and strength straight into their
little bodies. I knew in my head this wasn’t true. I knew it was irrational. But
I let it sit there in that place between my heart and my mind where it buffered
me from the truth—and I was grateful for it.
But as Cody prepared to leave for College, my comforting delusion slipped
out of its little wedge and I got a brief but undeniable view of my own
powerlessness. It took me awhile to see the delusion. At first I just saw that
Cody was moving outside the realm of my protection. I wouldn’t be able to see
him. Wouldn’t know exactly where he was. Wouldn’t be able to keep everything in
order around him so he would be safe. Only gradually did I admit that I had
never been able to keep him safe, not really. I had just thought I could because
my irrational belief had been so little tested. I worried and fretted and loved
and prayed and thought that somehow that kept him safe. But I never really had
that much power.
Several months later Cody came home from College in one piece, and aduring the next several years Cody has driven
thousands of miles back and forth, through snow-covered mountains, rainn storms and windswept
deserts, and every time, I held my breath until he reached his destination. Always worried, and calling him to make sure he wasn't getting sleepy or driving in the rain with his cruise control on. Giving him the "Mom vent".
No mother wants to think of her child battling unknown seas, whether
figurative or literal. But what I know in my mother’s heart is that nothing
could be more true to who Cody is than this life. His experience as a people person,
his unique gift of problem solving, his love of a physical challenge, and his
need to step outside the confines of his “normal” life to let God do something
new within him all come together in his ever changing adventures.
While Cody was still in high school, my friends daughter left for college. I asked the
friend who was president of a college for advice on being a good “college
parent.” He said that kids whose parents hold on too tightly—who call every day
or constantly repeat how much they miss them and wish they were home—these kids
never feel like they’ve “gotten away” emotionally no matter how many miles
separate them from their parents. Some of them spend the rest of their lives
trying to create the necessary emotional distance. But kids whose parents let
them go emotionally are free to “return”—to re-engage as separate adults in a
mutual, loving relationship with their parents. For me, someone given to
“psychic symbiosis” with my kids, I took my friend’s words to heart.
Let
them go, I kept telling myself,
so they can be free to return.
Cody goes to college away from home. But he returns home often. He doesn't stay here—not physically anyway. But in a healthy way,
I think he returns emotionally, and that connection remains no matter how
many miles separate us now. And so I follow Cody’s life and trips on the map and on his
Facebook, loving him, praying for him, and yes, worrying about him, but with
every concerned thought, as with every dream and experience he sees with those blue eyes , I let him go. And one day, he will meet a girl who he will marry and I will let him go once again, he will have babies and be happy, and I will let him go. But I will always anticipate his return, Because letting go only guarantees the return.
