Here I sit, typing away to the sounds of my 21 yr old daughter packing her suitcase as she gets ready to go on holiday with some friends. And I have nothing to do. And that feels very odd.
Actually, not exactly nothing to do. I am driving her round to her friend’s house in half an hour’s time. But apart from that, nothing.
I was thinking earlier about all of the summer holidays that we’ve had over the years, mostly together, a few apart, and just how much I have had to do previously.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t remember the doing as a chore, it’s just what you do as a parent. But now, I am feeling the absence of that doing. How funny is that.
I have the urge to shout up the stairs; “Have you got your passport?” but I know that she has.
How about; “Make sure you’ve got plenty of sunscreen” but that would just be annoying.
And then I have a whispering urge to tell her how much I love that she’s going away with her friends, how proud I am of her for working so hard to save the money needed, how I adore her independent streak and amazing sense of justice, how I love her just the way she is and wouldn’t change her for the world.
I listen to my ‘mother wisdom’ that’s telling me that now might not be the right time to tell her these things, she is in a bit of a rush after all, and so decide to write this blog instead. I can send the vibes up through the floorboards, I know that she can feel them. And I like sending them.
It’s funny how so many of the jobs that we acquire as parents start to fall away as our children become more independent of us and live their own lives. And yet we don’t even see when the jobs started, not really, they just did.
The spaces that this falling away leaves can feel painful, but also delicious, and the gaps are filled with a more settled excitement for them. Until a crisis hits of course, and then we snap back into parent mode, bring in the cavalry and get the job done.
