Through The Looking Glass: Letting Go

And so it is: I've completely lost my innate sense of how to parent. Poof, gone, evaporated. My daughter graduated from high school, is a penny's throw away from turning 18, and here I am, clinging to the past and grasping to a parenting style that no longer fits. It's like trying to squeeze a skinny size six shoe onto a size nine foot: it hurts, and it doesn't work. The mother-daughter dynamic has changed and, to an extent, so must I.

Parenting an "almost adult" is a tricky proposition, at best. At once I want to let her fly, but not too high. I want to let her fall, but not too hard. I want to absorb the blows that life's sure to throw her way, despite knowing that doing so isn't healthy (or realistic). I gotta let go, while still making sure she has boundaries and lives by the rules of the house. I am ill-prepared, despite thinking I had it all together.

My daughter is bright, funny, artistic. She feels deeply. Yet daily, often, I obsess about things I really should be letting her think about: Did she fill the tank with gas? Did she call about that job? Does she still want to go to college in Oregon because-we-haven't-talked- about-it--in-a-week-and-I-need-to-know-so-we-can-start-making-plans. Ugh. I must be exhausting to live with. That's a harsh realization. As a parent, I've spent 17 1/2 years nuturing and taking care. Now that the time is here to be a little more "hands off", I'm stymied about what that really means and how to do it.

Admitting this is embarrassing, because it means that in all of my years of patting myself on the back for doing a lot of things right, I think to a certain extent I failed: I should have started letting go earlier. At a minimum, for my sanity's sake but most of all, for hers.

I've heard it said that our kids are really just on loan to us from God. That we get the gift of parenting and loving them, but they never really belonged to us in the first place. I don't know how I feel about that, given I remember childbirth vividly. What I do know is that this road, this parenting gig, has taught me more lessons than I have ever, or will ever, be able to teach my daughter.

And I guess in the end, the lesson is all that matters.

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