Roots and Wings

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

Today, after drinking from the firehose of parenting four children for the past twenty-three years, my last child is leaving home. Being a mom, a good mom, or at least a “good enough” mom, has been far and away the hardest thing I have ever done. It was not a sprint but rather a marathon, a daily test of my physical and mental fortitude. You can try and train for it beforehand if you like, but nothing really prepares you no matter how many parenting books you read or veteran parents you talk to.

At the starting line, I had the pre-race jitters, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I took off running, trying to settle into the pace, listening to my favorite playlist. There were some runners’ “highs” like going trick-or-treating or on road trips with my kids, or watching one play Chopin on the piano. I would tell myself confidently, “Yeah, girl, you got this!” only to be bushwhacked by lice infestation(s), getting sick continuously from my school-age kids, or that time when I got a call from preschool that my child dropped drawer and took a dump on the playground (not naming names). On those days, like a distance runner with bleeding nipples, I would ask myself “What the hell was I thinking?” Or as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Even through exhaustion, side cramps, sweating, and getting jostled by other runners, I kept running albeit slowly at times. Strangers and spectators cheered encouragingly from the sidelines, “You’re so close!” There was a lot of laughing and a lot of crying. It’s true what they say though--the days were long (some of them June 21^st long) but the years were certainly short.

I should have gotten a runner’s “high” glimpsing the finish line, as well as a sense of accomplishment since all my grown children are perfectly imperfect, unique, kind, hilarious human beings who will hopefully make future contributions to society and help to heal this desperately broken world of ours. But as a parent, the finish line approaches infinity. You have made a commitment to worrying for the rest of your life. My primary hope as a parent at the outset was to bequeath two things to my children, to paraphrase Goethe: Roots and Wings. I think I have succeeded at that for the most part.

Now, looking forward after twenty-three years, I will strive to remember who I was as a person before I started running, before I joined the sisterhood of motherhood, if that person even still exists. And keep pushing on to avoid the post-race blues. High five to my fellow runners. It was an amazing race.