Moms Never Ready to Let Go

The Boston Herald

This is what my obstetrician said about anesthesia: "Don't worry. When the time comes, I'll take care of you. That's my job," he assured me, back in the days before Lamaze and birthing classes and videotaped births. I was only 22. I was pregnant for the first time. Everything I knew about medicine I'd learned on "Dr. Kildare." I believed my doctor.

But when the time finally came, he was home sleeping.

"Aren't you going to call him?" I asked the nurse who handed me  a hospital johnny and ordered my husband to go home.

"When the time comes," the nurse told me.

"Aren't you going to call him now?" I screamed a couple of hours later, between contractions.

"Not yet," the nurse insisted. 

The doctor arrived eventually - 12 minutes before my son was born. Until then I'd been alone with a nurse who kept reminding me that she'd had six children all without caterwauling.

I felt like an instant failure at motherhood. I should have been stoic but I wasn't. Nobody had told me that having a baby hurts.

"There's no reason for you to carry on like this," the nurse said to me. 

But there were reasons. I was alone. I was afraid. I didn't know what was next. I didn't know how to ride the pain, how to breathe, how to focus. I wasn't prepared.

I am still not prepared. Twenty-two years later my son is grown and I still don't know how to ride the pain and how to focus. Twenty-two years later I am still afraid, not because I don't know what's next, but because I do.

I know where the road leads. It leads away from me.

Three weeks ago my son graduated from college. Three days ago  he moved to Florida. This is the natural order of things. This, then, is a happy ending.

Then why am I not smiling? Why, even when life is beautiful, even when your son grows up and he didn't die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or get leukemia or killed crossing the street or abducted or injured in a car crash. Even when you get everything you want, everything you begged God for - why is it still not enough?

I want more. I want it back. I want it all again: "Trot, trot to Boston,"Legos, Little League, Connect Four. "Mommy, will you play catch with me?" "Will you tie my shoes?" "Can you drive me to Mike's?" "Can I take the car?”

It all went too fast.

Now it's time to let go. This may be natural, just as giving birth is natural, but it hurts nonetheless. How could it not? How do you release what you've held on to for years? How do you give away what you love?

"He isn't going to war," people say. "He isn't going forever. He's just testing his wings. He'll come back. They always do."

No they don't. This is a lie. They don't come back because they can't, because they shouldn't, because they're not children anymore.  They're adults. They have to leave. We all have to leave our parents to live our own lives.

My son went to nursery school three mornings a week, then kindergarten every day, then first grade all day. He spent a week one summer at a friend's. He went to baseball camp in New Hampshire when he was 12, lived at college when he was 17, moved to Florida for a semester, vacationed in Cancun, spent last summer in San Diego. This newest leave taking is nothing more, everyone says. But it is. This newest leave taking is forever.

I knew when I was pregnant that I would always miss being  pregnant, miss the feeling of doing something when I was doing nothing, miss the kicks and the hiccups and the company.

All these years later I remember the feeling. I look at pregnant women and envy them. Now I will look at mothers of boys, toddler or teen, and envy them, too. Because my boy lives in Florida. Because my boy is a man.