I cradled your hand.
He cradled your head.
We’ll cradle your heart.
FOREVER.
When I laid my head on my pillow Saturday night, for the
first time in eighteen years, five months and twelve days I didn’t know exactly
where you were. Revisiting the final moments before I left you at college for the first
time brought tears to my eyes and the watershed would go on for hours that
night and bleed into the next day.
Intellectually I knew there were other short periods of
time, times when you went to sleep away camp or leadership camp, when I didn’t
know where you were at any given moment. During those short experiments, I knew
you were coming back. This time I had to accept that you were on a road of your
own making, enveloped in the first phase of your own life journey. An excursion
filled with dreams and decisions that are rooted in a story we started long ago
but that only you get to write the important chapters too.
I cried some more, feeling as if I’d lost you. I mean, I
knew physically where I’d dropped you off. I had the empty boxes, the leftover
bedding wrappings, and the dwindling bank account to prove that it really
happened, that you were living on your own. It was as if by depositing you in
that tiny room the size of a walk in closet that I’d given you to the world.
There’s no other way to describe the overwhelming feeling in
the pit of my stomach, it is nostalgia tinged with acute loss. Not a loss as
severe as some, but where’s the roadmap for what we’re going through? And
today, in the light of the day after, I realize that the pieces and elements of
this loss may last the rest of my life. You will never be completely and
utterly ours, you are your own person.
What are the stages of letting go? How to you give up the
child you’ve created out of love, the child you’ve dedicated eighteen years to
making strong, resilient and capable to the world with only the whisper of hope
that the world will embrace her in a kind and gentle way?
In the weeks leading up to our separation, all I could think
about was the day you were born and that when they put you in my arms you
raised a tiny fist. Less than twenty-four hours after your birth we brought you
home from the hospital. You hadn’t made more than a peep in the hospital nursery
and all the nurses commented on how good you were compared to the boy babies
who all cried in unison. I should have known that was the first example of the
determined personality just waiting to shine through. No, you would not follow
the boys and cry, you’d cry and fuss on your own terms or not at all. Once we
were home you were hungry, nothing else would soothe you and with my lactation
production not up to your standards you let everyone know you were not pleased
with the shabby accommodations.
The only way we could get you to stop crying was to hold
you, so your dad sat on the corner of our bed and held you. I can still see
his large hands, one cradling your head and the other cupping your tiny body.
Exhausted, I fell asleep, lactation production really takes it out of you. I
woke up five hours later with your daddy still sitting in the exact same spot,
his hands in the exact same position. He hadn’t moved, afraid if he did that
one or both of us would wake up.
Sometimes I watch your dad when he’s looking at you, seeing
the young woman you’ve become and I know he wishes he could protect you the way
he did that night for the rest of your life. In some ways, we both wish we
could go back to the beginning and do all those little things that you never
knew about over again because many of them molded you into the kind,
thoughtful, loving person you are today.
There were many sleepless nights with you, when being held
was the only consolation that you’d accept. No one held you with more
dedication than your father, walking in circles with you cradled in a papoose.
Then you discovered the binky and things became better for us, easier, but
still determined to feel secure, you always had one in your mouth and another
one in that small fist, so the back-up-binky and it’s many shenanigans began.
Frankly, I thought I’d never pry those tiny security objects loose from your
skillful hands. They held you safely assured until you were about three years
old when the binky bugs came for them. You didn’t seem especially phased by the
tiny holes the binky bugs mysteriously ‘ate’ into the rubber nipple, making the
sucking action obsolete. You didn’t even cry. Surrendering the plastic covers
of the binkies when all the rubber had been ‘eaten’ away by the binky bugs, one
scissor clip at a time. But by this time you’d found the power of your own
words, the inexhaustible lure of questions you posed and let’s not forget the
inexplicable power that Pokemon held over you.
In your quest for the world to lean your way there were
little hiccups along the way, the intolerable Mrs. H., the substitute teacher,
you just couldn’t deal with on Halloween in second grade. Of course I came to
school and saw you through it, holding your hand and reassuring you. The
disappointment when you weren’t put on a sports team in junior high, only to
play that sport in high school, starting out on JV as a Freshman and playing at
the varsity level three years as an all conference athlete. And finally, your
last colossal melt down, funny, but that was about food too! Because you were
determined to have BBQ shrimp as your first meal on our vacation to South
Carolina and the four star restaurant at Biltmore didn’t have it! You spent a
considerable amount of time throwing a tantrum in the bathroom. I went down to
the bathroom and found you talking to yourself, giving yourself a pep talk
about the fact that the battle wasn’t over. I laughed about it then, but now
looking back it reveals something about you that is your core strength. You are
the MOST strong-minded person I’ve ever met, you set a goal and you see it
through, and the most awesome thing is that you’re not afraid to stop along the
way and help others, you’re not self-centered or destructive about it. You just
put one foot in front of the other until you meet the goal and you never
complain along the way because you’re to busy giving yourself a pep talk to
bother with anything negative.
You’re like your daddy sitting on the edge of the bed,
focused on the goal of waiting for the new day when the crying will be over.
Waiting for the next opportunity to present itself, to prove your unwavering
adaptability and drive. I can be content in the fact that I know you won’t let
yourself down, you know where you’re going and you know where you’ve come from
and we’ll always be here, our arms open wide to hold you when you’re just not
sure.
So I’m letting go a bit at a time, I’m lessoning the touch.
But I hope you can feel it, our love, on you today all those miles away, just
as you felt it cradling you that night eighteen years ago.
Love you,
Mom & Dad
