Letting go

I have deleted the original and totally re-written 'When do you let go.' This the great thing about a blog. Once you send your piece off for somebody else to publish, it's no longer your call what happens to it or how it's edited. Hope you like this version better.

When do you let go? It’s a question every mother since the dawn of time has asked herself. As far as I know, no one has come up with the definitive answer yet. Neither had I one Monday morning many years ago. Or maybe it was a Tuesday. When one day merges into the other it’s hard to tell. Whatever the day, my routine was set in stone. I would have been busy counting, changing and soaking nappies. After that I’d feed my child, play with him, clean up after him and prepare his evening meal. The conclusion I came to when a stray thought interrupted my busy routine, was that it was no time to philosophise, there was a seemingly endless vista of years ahead of me, lots of time to work things out. I put off the question, till I could give it my full consideration.

No time to do that on my first child’s first day at kinder. I was too busy dealing with my stressed child. David cried and clutched my hand. I gently disengaged it with some soothing words about our meeting again soon. I did some weeping myself on the way home and wondered why I couldn’t take a leaf out of our cat’s book. We had found a home for her kittens. In only a matter of weeks Toffee had no trouble at all turning a disinterested back on her frolicking children. Given a couple of months more and she wouldn’t have known them had they had passed her in the street. I wiped away the tears and went home to clear up the chaos and get ready for the next round. I didn’t have time for self pity.

There was excitement at the local primary school on David’s first day. We were surrounded by mothers and by hyperactive children. Others, first timers, stood around quietly watching as the veterans gathered in little groups talking and their children who obviously also knew each other played chasey. Not knowing or caring that there was an etiquette to these things, David tried to extricate himself from my grip. He was raring to go and meet these children. He wanted to make friends, and he instinctively knew that hand holding wasn’t what a school boy did. Anyhow why was I keeping him from that big adventure that his dad and I had been preparing him for? I looked at the well scrubbed young man; his usually unruly curls were damped, his crisp white shirt already needed tucking in, grey shorts exposed two skinny little legs, a scabby knee and several bruises. It was obvious that David was ready for school, but was I?

I pushed that thought back into the subconscious void where all uncomfortable thoughts go. My husband and I thought we had prepared for it all, but we hadn’t counted on our own reactions when David came home chattering about the best little teacher in the world. From that time on it was, Miss Smith said, Mr Brown said all the way through primary school. David continued to consult us, but we became increasingly aware that we had competition. Our son’s horizons had expanded and a host of Miss Smiths were going to be vying for our boy’s attention.

Occasionally parents could still be useful, helping out with homework, ironing uniforms and moonlighting as chauffeurs. And what did I think of this or that girl, David wanted to know. He felt a bit awkward and unsure. I took it to mean that I had a mandate to express my thoughts and did it, constantly. But one day he stopped asking or listening. In fact he discouraged any sort of dialogue on the matter. David was making up his own mind about girls and life and the universe. It was devastating to be demoted from a proactive parent to a figurehead, devastating but not sudden. The indicators that my son had become independent of us had been there if I had chosen to take notice.

I'm much wiser after the event. I know now that parenting is a series of letting go. Children know it instinctively, but it’s such a slow process that it takes parents a lot longer to pick up on it. When you begin with vulnerable and reliant children and have committed you life to them for years or even decades, it's hard to notice when they have finally stopped needing us. When they finally distance themselves from us and our windmill arms it's only natural that we are left bereft. I know now that if we play our cards right and constantly remind ourselves that our children are on loan to us only, we could have a life after they have left us. Well, we could have a life till they haul us out of retirement for babysitting duties, but that’s another story.