Mom knows it's time to let go
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
It's been all dress rehearsals until now. I left, she left, but we always came back to one another. That was the ending.
When she was an infant, I left her for the first time to go to a party at the Ponkapoag Civic. I didn't want to go. But everyone said "She'll be fine." So I went and kept looking at the clock.
When I went to Atlanta with my husband for a weekend, friends said, "You need to relax and enjoy yourself." Pretending to agree, I thought this was crazy. I enjoyed myself most when I was with her. On winter mornings when the older children were in school, I'd bundle her up and put her in her carriage and push her down the street. And I'd feel like Eve in the Garden, naming things: "tree," "sky" "bird," "truck." "Say 'truck,' Julie," and she would, making old things seem new.
When she was 4, it was her turn to leave me. I drove her to nursery school and walked down the long corridor to her classroom door. "Don't step on the gray squares, Mama," she warned, trying not to cry. Every day, we held hands and hop-skipped over the gray tiles.
When she was 5, I waited with her at the end of the front walk for her bus to come and just before it stopped, she'd turn and kiss me, not caring who saw. All through grammar school, I waited at the bus stop across the street, and in middle school I waited by the door and in high school I pretended I wasn't waiting at all.
Children are not ours. They come through us but they are not us. Children are like kites. Eventually they soar alone. I knew these things. But I knew the way you know that if you live long enough, someday you'll be old, the way you know all kids become grownups, even your own. You nod, you acknowledge this, but you don't believe.
When she went away to college, I got accustomed to her being gone. She phoned all the time and we thought of reasons for weekends in New York and she thought of reasons for weekends back here and there was Thanksgiving and Christmas, and spring break and summer vacation. And no, it wasn't as bad as I'd imagined. Even when she decided to work in Los Angeles one summer, it was OK. Even when she got a job in the Catskills the next summer, I was fine. Even when her trips home became fewer and fewer, I wasn't sad because this was still her home. This was where she hung her hat. Wasn't her room still down the hall?
When she came home last weekend it was for her graduation party. I'd been counting the days, planning, anticipating. A party keeps you focused. What if it snowed and she couldn't get home? What if no one came? The party was great, no glitches, and the day after was great, too. We went to church and to a movie. We hung out. We laughed. Then it was Monday and time for her to go back to New York.
Only it wasn't "go back." This time she was "going home." She was a full-fledged, diploma-carrying grown-up. The commission I'd held for nearly 30 years, raising children, was now retired. I drove her to the train station, and we both waved goodbye.
In church now I watch young mothers with babies and toddlers pulling on them, and older children, 4 and 5, touching their mother's faces. I watch and I think: I was a young mother once. I held little hands, I waited at the bus stop, I hop-skipped over the gray tiles. I was pulled on and touched and beloved.
And the memories of these long ago days make me sigh. And smile.
