the hardest part

this past week was a busy one which is high resolution contrast from the slowness & ease to which I have become accustomed.

My boyfriend and I attended his daughter’s High School Graduation last week, where I got a good preview run of the emotional landscape I will bear witness to as we watch our babies be released out into this wild world with a new found freedom, passion and hunger for their future. To say I am thrilled to be able to continue to watch our babies learn and grow is an understatement. My heart swells with pride thinking of how they’re going to impact the world around them with their passions, creativity, wit, and determination to create the future of their own volition. The unbound potential truly is a captivating and beautiful thing to experience from this side of parenthood.

During a reading at last week’s commencement speech, the principal had read a poem. Within the poem, the principal said,

‘‘Letting them go is an act of love.

an act of true, genuine, deep love.”

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

It was heavy on my mind the last few weeks. It seems like not much time has passed since I, myself was standing at the open doorway of life’s potential. Life had picked me up and hurled me into motherhood just as soon as I could graduate. Within just months, I had to figure out not only my own life, but how to nurture the life of the child that I now bear in my arms.

We both had so much to learn.

The night of his birth I made him a promise… a promise at the time I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to keep. However, I did know in that moment I would do whatever it took to make sure we would be okay. We were either going to be okay or I was going to die trying to get us there. That left me with two outcomes.

Plan A: We do, in fact, make it out okay.

Plan B: Death by fighting until the very end to keep such promise.

I figured in case of failure, this would be an honorable end to my story. One I made peace with in that very moment as I held my squished up newborn baby on my chest just a short 18 years ago.

I was prepared for the self sacrifice motherhood takes on a woman. I was prepared for joy, I was prepared to love this baby in a way I had never understood love for another person before. I was prepared to support goals and listen to reasonings when things seemed unfair. I was prepared to endure the teenage angst and to even hear that at some point in time, he may just tell me he hates me.

I was prepared to be humbled in ways that left me wanting to crawl out of my skin.

I was prepared for midnight phone calls to pick him up from places he had no business being & I was prepared for disappointment on both of our parts. I was prepared at times to feel like I was failing. I was prepared for first steps, losing teeth, and communal heartbreaks. I was prepared for him to get his drivers license, go to prom, and find a girlfriend. I was prepared to understand that my absence was going to be the answer at times, as heart wrenching to me as that truth was, I was prepared to endure anything.. I was prepared for my ‘I love you’ messages to be disputed. I came to grips with the fact that sometimes the best thing I could do was give him space & time. I had conversations planned for scenarios that never occurred. I was prepared to laugh louder, love unconditionally, & make sure that no matter what situation he found himself in, that he understood mom was always going to be present if he wanted me to be.

We celebrated that baby’s 18th birthday this week. & guess what?

We’re okay.

We were together, and we were more than okay.

But it was that very moment, in that dark, auditorium balcony seat holding my boyfriend’s hand with tears in my eyes that I came to the harrowing realization that I had not, in fact, prepared for everything.

The one thing I did not prepare for, was letting him go.