Middle age is all about letting go, including sending your kids off to college.
The other day I found a love letter I wrote to my twins the day before they started kindergarten dated Sept. 5, 2012. Maybe it was more like a goodbye letter? Or a closing-of-a-chapter letter? It definitely wasn’t a “good luck in your adventures in this new world you’re about to enter!” letter. I was sad and I wanted to hold onto them just a little bit longer. As I read over the words I was penning to them (that they’ve never read), I could feel the aching in my young mother’s heart. It’s so strange to create a person then constantly be in the act of letting that person go. Even though the whole point of parenting is encouraging and preparing them to successfully live on their own, it is brutal.
I’m digging through old things because that’s what I do when I feel sentimental. I sit on the floor and sift through the detritus of the life we’ve had and run my thumb over pieces of fabric that they outgrew. I touch my fingertips to letters that look scribbled; only I know the work and concentration it took to put them onto construction paper. I’m touching their words in this way as if it could transport me through time to caress the little fingers that wrote them. I flip through photos and wish I could push my nose into that halo of golden ringlets to smell the little kid smell of sweat and the recently disappeared babies they were. If I linger in these memories for long enough, I lose a sense of now. I can make myself forget for a few hours that my children are about to go, once again, out into a new world without me.
When they headed off to kindergarten 13 years ago, I was scared that the world would change them. To me, they were perfect and weird in a way that only 5-year-olds can be. More of us should probably wear rainboots with a baby-blanket poncho and a too-big cowboy hat, like my son did. More of us should carry a doctor bag to brunch, like my daughter, because who knows when you’ll need to pull out a stethoscope? We should probably spend time making up more evocative words for things than the ones that already exist. Seltzer really is much better when it’s called, “spicy water.” Where does that creativity go when we grow up? I was desperate to keep all of these things bottled inside of my twins. Sending them off to kindergarten felt like it would be a crucial undoing.
From this distance — at the end of their senior year in high school — I can see how naive my fear was. Isn’t that always the way? “Oh sweet woman, your kids will be fine,” I can hear a future me tell past me. And more experienced parents told me something similar at the time. I know that I was comforted by others who’d been there before, who told me my fears were strong, but my kids were stronger. In that moment, though, when we are standing at an obvious and uncharted crossroad, how can we know? All we can do is hold our breath and hope for the best. What a brave thing it is to love anyone enough to let them go.
The foreign, unfamiliar feeling that comes with being middle aged stems from letting go, I think. When I was younger I was the one doing the leaving; leaping head first into something strange and new. The physics of life was propelling me forward with exciting momentum. I was eager to find out what was next and happy to leave old things behind. Somewhere along the way, however, I passed an important, invisible fulcrum point. Now I tearfully let things go. Family members who shaped my sense of identity have started to shake off this mortal coil, and I have to find peace with only being left with their memory. My eyelids used to be held up by my eyebrows and they’re not anymore, so I have to get used to my new look in the mirror. The man I thought I’d grow old with moves across the country with his new girlfriend and I find a way to wish them well. My children, heartbeat of my heartbeat, leave for college soon and … I will find a way to let them go.
Here I am, though, suddenly very aware of the “empty” part of the empty nest. People keep asking me what I am going to do with all my time, and the best thing I can come up with at the moment is “not cook dinner.” Maybe for some parents, reaching this point with your kids feels like a finish line that they’re relieved to cross. I can see that. It’s a hell of a lot of work (please see comment above re: cooking). Not me. A strange thing happened that I did not expect: As my kids aged, I fell more in love with them. This impossibly big love is what’s making me want to hold on to them just a little bit more now like I did when they were headed to kindergarten; to wish away the caps and gowns and ignore the dorm room move-in dates.
Reading back over the letter to my little kids, I see the selfless kind of love that you need to nurture and protect babies and toddlers. I see sleepless nights and holding hands to cross the street. That kind of love was truly special and poignant, and more than a little exhausting. The older they grew, though, the more I grew to like them as people, not just beings I made who needed me. Hearing my daughter tell me about a huge accomplishment that she thinks is no big deal, or watching my son perform one of his own songs on stage, the kind of love I feel makes me want to burst. It turns out when I sent them off to kindergarten they weren’t undone by school or teachers or friends. They became more of who they are, and I really like who they are. I want to spend even more time with them right at the time when they’re ready to be on their own. I can taste the irony in my tears.
Finding this old letter feels like it should teach me a lesson. I should be able to soothe myself with knowing that the last time I felt this same feeling — sending them out into the world without me — things turned out pretty well. I’m having a hard time believing my own experience, though. Like the advice that came from well-meaning older parents 13 years ago, I don’t want to hear it. Old me can’t possibly understand how current me feels in this brand new place. She’s never been here, not with these grown, lovely kids. How could she possibly know how much it would ache to take this next step?
I worry less about things turning out OK this time around. I know they will be fine, maybe even extraordinary. It’s more that when they come home at the end of their day and dump out all the wonderful and shitty and weird things that happened, I won’t get to be the one to gather it all up and hold it for them. I won’t be putting loose socks into their laundry baskets or asking one of them to reach the top shelf for me as I listen to their stories. I know I’ll get to hear the highlights. If I’m lucky I’ll be a source of comfort and maybe sometimes a little wisdom. But things will be different. This particular chapter is closing. They are about to write the next one all on their own.
This morning when I hugged my daughter goodbye on her way to school — taller than me now, but still with golden ringlets — I turned my nose into her hair and silently told her how much I would miss her. Not just today, but every day. I don’t want to tell her that every moment of every day of my life has been dedicated to her since the day she was born and that it will feel so very empty without her physical presence. That’s too much for anyone to bear despite the fact that’s how big my feelings feel. Instead, I give her head a long kiss and say, “I love you so much! Have a good day.”
I closed my kindergarten love letter to them with words that feel similar to what I’d write to them today, even though the people I’m talking to stay up much later than me now, and their faces don’t get quite so dirty:
I want you two to hold onto your quirks, your intelligence, your creativity, your kind-heartedness, and not let the world squash it into neatly fitting norms.
But after today, what I want will matter less and less. And I guess if I’m being truly honest, that is really where my fear lies. I want to make you good people. I want to be the one to remind you of your manners, and encourage you to jump!, to point out the strangeness of a snapdragon, to hold you tight when you’re stung by a bee. I want your dad’s irreverence and big words and dramatic diatribes to be your influence. All we’ve got left for that though, is this afternoon.
So, despite the fact that it normally annoys me to no end, I hope that today you get filthy dirty at the playground. That you come home later than the other kids do because you’re investigating some yet-undiscovered surprise that this city has secreted away. I hope you eat Icees from the Icee man at the playground. But if your dad makes you come home earlier than you would like to, know that he did that for me. Because for one more night, I want you to snuggle up on the couch next to me while I brush the hair away from your eyes and feel the weight of your bodies pressed into me. And tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll let you go.
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Lili Zarghami lives with her teenagers in Brooklyn. She’s been writing for and providing editorial direction at women’s websites like Redbook, HGTV, Better Homes & Gardens and more since the turn of the century. She can remember the addresses of all the places she was a latchkey kid but has no idea what her email password is.
