Letting go doesn't get any easier the third time around

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

The youngest just got her driver's license. Another day. Another benchmark. They come so regularly lately that I have trouble keeping up with them. The oldest graduated and moved to Florida. Then the middle one turned 21. Then the youngest turned 16 and got her driver's permit. Then the middle one graduated and moved home. Now there is this. The birds have grown up and have all flown away.

I watch the 16-year-old back out of the driveway, with a resignation I didn't have when my son got his license. I remember wishing then that I could put bumper pads around every tree and pole. I wanted to stand in the middle of the road and tell every driver in the state to slow down, be careful, that my son was new and inexperienced and far more confident than he should be, and therefore vulnerable to accidents. Now I just smile and say a silent prayer as my youngest drives away.

Is it possible that I am getting used to this leave-taking, this risk-taking? Or do I just finally know that there's nothing I can do about any of it?

A friend calls. "How do you feel?" she asks, concerned because she has a daughter, too, a youngest child who will soon be behind the wheel of her car. What she really wants to know, of course, is how I feel letting this last one go. Am I worried about her? Is this a happy moment or a sad one?

I feel fine, I assure her. And I do. I feel happy for my daughter. She's a good driver. It's time she had her license. This is the natural progression of things. But I feel an underlying unease, too. Fear nibbles at the corners of consciousness - fear of what's down the road and around the corner. It's a fear of things that all young creatures encounter when they spread their wings and leave their nests.

She returns home within 10 minutes of her departure. The car is on empty. "Can I have your credit card, Mom?" Fifteen minutes later, she's back again. "Grandma wanted me to get keys made but it cost $6, and I've only got $3." I give her the money. A half hour passes and she's at the door again.

"Carla and Bridget and I are going school shopping at South Shore Plaza," she announces. "We're just going to look so I don't need any money." Carla and Bridget stand smiling beside her.

"You can't go to the plaza," I hear myself saying. "You can go looking somewhere else. The Southeast Expressway is too dangerous."

"But Mom," my daughter says. "I've driven it with Dad. I'll be fine. I'm a good driver. Don't worry."

Her friends agree. They chime in: She's a great driver.

And how do I feel now? What will I say if my friend calls back? Now there's one more thing over which I know I have no control.

"You can't protect people. All you can do is love them," John Irving wrote in one of his books, and I have said this aloud constantly over the years, in an attempt to convince myself of its truth.

We were in a car accident last week, this daughter and I. I was behind the wheel, stopped at a red light. She was in the passenger seat beside me. A large white van appeared from nowhere and smashed right into her side of the car. We saw it coming. We shouted "Stop!" And I tried, but couldn't get out of the way - there was nowhere to move. The van rammed both the front and rear door. The car was hurt, but my daughter was not. How easily she could have been. The van could have been going faster. It could have been a truck or a bus. It could have hit the gas tank. The car could have exploded. There are so many horrible scenarios. The point is that there she was, "safe" with me, stopped at a light, out of harm's way. But there is no "out of harm's way."

Safety is an illusion, something we've made up so we don't give up; something we've invented so we can fall asleep at night.

I tell my daughter she can go to the plaza but to pay attention to her right on the expressway because people are always passing on the right. And I remind her and her friends to wear their seat belts. Then I kiss her good-bye and go back into my office to work.

"I'll be careful," she promises, as she drives away. That's all any of us can be - careful and responsible. The rest is beyond our control.