Our kids were 15 and 13 when I met their Dad. His face lit up when he told me about his sons. Older kids. Be careful, I thought. That’ll go so fast. But I was already in love. In a flash, it was time to let the kids go — and it was, indeed, really hard.
Yellow-orange school buses tunnel through the vast fields of tall cornstalks in our small town. Those sentries stand poker straight, green row upon tidy row. The hot mess of August yields to order.
These days can be soggy, teary ones. We must let go of summer, and let go of our children. Their new chapter has arrived.
But knowing this, and actually doing it is hard.
Last summer, as I struggled to let go, author Anne Lamott’s wise words struck a chord.
“You cannot follow your children around forever with sunscreen and lip balm,” she said. “It’s disrespectful.”
Wisdom Over Coffee ~ How did She Know?
The Wegmans Café in the college town over the mountain had become my mobile office. I’d gotten into a bit of trouble with my younger stepson, hovering over him at breakfast-time.
He would soon be 19, a freshman in college and wanted to make his own breakfast, thank-you-very-much. The morning smoothie and scrambled eggs had been one of those few things I could do for him, and I felt good about providing a healthy and nutritious start to his day.
So I signed-up for a month of daily, 8 a.m. “yoga boot camp” classes to force myself out the door by 7, before he was up, then I’d hunker down to work at a place with good coffee and wi-fi.
During Anne Lamott’s TED Talk about the 12 things she knew to be true as she turned 61 a few months prior, she looked straight at her audience — straight at me — and said:
“You cannot follow your children around forever with sunscreen and lip balm. It’s disrespectful.”
I gasped.
How did she know that at that very late-summer moment, the sunscreen and lip balm I’d bought for our kids at the start of summer was still sitting unopened in its pristine packaging on their dressers?
Our Kids Were Teenagers when I Met Them
When I met my husband at a Halloween party, his face lit up when he mentioned his boys, 15 and 13. His bright smile. His deep brown eyes. His stature.
My insides turned to butter and I thought: This man is gorgeous!
Then the kids’ ages, 15 and 13, registered. My intuition whispered: Oh gheesh. Older kids. Be careful. That’ll go so fast. That will be hard.
So true — and a moment too late.
Their family of three only fueled my attraction, and turned my life upside down.
I’d arrived in my 40s, recently divorced, with no children and an unfulfilled dream of having a family of my own.
In my 20s, my priority was to establish a writing life and home of my own, before being swallowed up by motherhood and the family that would most certainly happen later when the right guy came along.
A guy appeared. He turned out to be the wrong guy and there went my 30s. But I’d moved with him to a good place. So when he moved on, I stayed.
Later had come and gone. I’d returned to single life. That would be that. At 41, I realized my window to be a mom would soon slam shut. Was I really OK with that? I debated whether to have a child on my own.
(My friend Cristina would soon face similar questions and decided to have a baby on her own. Totally by choice. Totally badass.)
Beautiful & Perfect Trio
Just after Thanksgiving that year, I saw the boys for the first time when Superman sent a snapshot of the three of them from that summer.
They are all beaming in celebration after the younger boy’s team won a baseball championship game. In the post-game snapshot, he is between his Dad and older, taller brother. He wears a medal around his neck and smiles ear-to-ear, his black eye-paint smeared across the top of his cheekbones, his baseball uniform shirt unbuttoned and rumpled from playing.
They stood close enough for their shoulders to touch. Superman had his hand on the shoulder of his younger son, who was patting his older brother’s stomach.
My heart leaped over the moon.
The boys and I met before Christmas. They were just as sweet as in the picture.
My focus shifted to treading carefully in their “Man Cave,” doing what I could for them. That first winter, that meant cheering from the stands at wrestling matches and basketball games. Then came baseball and football games. Surely, I was embarrassingly loud.
I dove into cooking for them.
It wasn’t always easy for them, me or their Dad.
But we figured it out and became family.
A blink later and the boys stood as their grandmother pinned boutonnieres with white roses to their blue button-down shirts minutes before their dad and I got married.
By then, we were all clear that all this was true at once: I was not their mother. Their mom loves them very much.
And yet, they both are my kids, our sons, my stepsons.
Another blink and they were as tall and handsome as their dad, wearing tuxes before prom, each with a rose pinned to his lapel that matched his date’s dress.
In a flash, our younger son had graduated high school and was preparing to go to college — and making his own smoothie. Was there nothing left that I could do for him?
Now my job was to let go. It was hard.
How Will They Know?
Over in that college town, I had coffee with a college student who complained about her over-protective parents.
I told her I was struggling to let go.
I told her what Anne Lamott said about how the hovering was disrespectful.
Exactly! She said. Yes.
She’s insulted when her parents tell her she can’t drive after dark. Like she’s not capable of it.
She’s deflated when she calls home with an exciting opportunity and her parents bring up some negative worry. Why can’t they just be happy for her? Why can’t they be happy when she’s home instead of harping on when she’s not home?
And when she leaves, her mom lingers at the window, watching her go. It drives her crazy.
I cringed, then confessed. I stand at the kitchen window and watch them drive away, saying a little prayer, asking God to please watch over my husband and boys and bring them back home safely.
It’s annoying! said my student.
Ok, OK! I get it! I said. (And I remembered my mom standing at the window or waiting up until I got home and yeah, it drove me crazy, too.)
The Greatest Fear
But, I appealed to my student:
Try to understand — even though it’s probably impossible to really get this until it happens in your life.
When you become a parent — in whatever way you become a parent — you feel this unbelievable, tremendous, heart-bursting, love for these children.
It is bigger and more powerful than you can believe, than your body can even hold. You would do anything to protect this child from hurt.
You read the news. You know things happen. Car accidents. Freak accidents. Thunderstorms and floods.
Plus the crazy, unkind people you know are out there. People who could hurt them. Badly.
On any given day, something awful can happen. You know this.
Your greatest fear is that someone or something awful will harm your child, lead him to suffer pain, derail the potential of his life — or even end it.
You can’t imagine surviving that.
How Will They Know?
And, I told her, if I’m not concerned about their well-being — and protecting them from the sun’s harmful rays — how will they know I love them?
We know, she said. We know from all the times before when we were little.
But I wasn’t there when they were little!
Well, there is that, she said.
I’m trying, I told her.
~~~~~~
That night, I talked with my older stepson about all this. He was sunburnt and leaving the next day on a big trip to Montana.
He sighed in solidarity. He agreed with my student.
OK, I said. But if I don’t buy you sunscreen and lip balm and hover at the window when you pull out of the driveway: How will you know how much I love you?
He said: Just tell us.
So I hugged him, carefully because his skin burned, and said goodnight and wished him a good trip and told him I loved him with all my heart.
Enjoying Today’s Big Steps — and the Next
A few weeks later, a friend who was about to drop her youngest daughter at college said these wise words: We just have to sit back and enjoy watching them take these big steps.
Yes.
I can focus on all their big steps that I missed — like when our oldest was a little 5-year-old kid on his way to kindergarten who waved goodbye and disappeared into the school bus, leaving his dad teary-eyed on the curb.
Oh, what I would give to have been to see the three of them then.
But that’s not our story.
Or I can be grateful I’ve been here to stand beside their Dad and see them learn to drive, fall in love with their girlfriends, graduate from high school, leave for college where they have exceled and matured.
Learning to be Fireproof
Last summer, that time of loss was about them — and some of it surely was about me never experiencing “traditional” motherhood and all I imagine about it: Rocking my child, reading stories at bedtime, holding a small hand in mine while we cross the street or climb the ladder of a slide.
None of that was their problem. It was all my stuff to resolve.
To cling to them because of decisions I made in my 20s and 30s would have done them a disservice. It would have been unkind and unfair.
Disrespectful, and most definitely not my job in their lives.
Last week, this bit of wisdom, thanks to author Glennon Doyle: Our job is not to protect them from their pain, but to let them walk through the fire because that’s how they will learn they are fireproof.
That aligns with my husband’s philosophy — and to parent with him is an honor, responsibility and privilege.
Still… There Will Be Tears
So I let go. We dropped our youngest son at college. I cried the second I was back in the car. I re-focused on my work. I still missed him terribly.
I tell our sons how much I love them every time we say goodbye — and sometimes just out of the blue.
Loss sucks. Period. We need to grieve our losses, and cry our tears.
But, gratefully, as my husband reminds me, these changes are about life, not death. New chapters of their lives. New chapters of our lives and relationships with them.
Our youngest had a stellar college freshman baseball season. Our oldest is engaged.
We have so much to look forward to.
So I focus on all that’s good about the world. The joy of learning new things. Love. Knowledge. Manhood. Their reach toward their full, amazing potential as human beings, fathers and men.
Shining their light. Achieving their brilliance. Because the world needs people like this. The world needs men like this.
I am re-balancing my life, too, and that’s OK. My time is better spent writing than chasing people around with lip balm, sunscreen and Neosporin.
I let go. I talk to the dogs a lot. (OK, I fuss over the dogs, A LOT.)
This summer, when our youngest was home from college, I made sure there was cereal in the cupboard. Even the sugary kind. I stayed in my home office in the mornings.
This all still gets messy, and sometimes I’m in trouble for hovering.
Step back, my intuition whispers. Be grateful for what we have become to each other, how they let me onto their team and experience parenthood. I shed a few tears. I go on with my day.
And we all know I’ve got sunscreen and lip balm right here — just in case.