Don't Grow Up

My college roommate called me to the hospital when his first child was born. I brought sandwiches and supplies and placed them in the room as he dressed me in a protective gown. When he handed his newborn son to me, I balked, “No! I’ll break him!” He smiled and I held my first baby.

Later, after his son was back in the nursery and his wife was getting some needed sleep, we looked through at the tiny baby on the other side of the window and my friend whispered, “Grow up!”

Yesterday, I watched my eighteen-year-old son leave the house on the way to his summer job and, after the door closed and we’d said, “I love you, see you this evening,” I whispered, “Don’t grow up!”

Of course, I want my child to become an independent adult. Of course, I want him to go to college and experience those wonderful lessons that he needs to become the person all of us want him to become. I just don’t want him to leave. I don’t want to let go of our time as parent and child.

Part of this is probably because he is the last child leaving the nest. Part of this may be that I teach teenagers and I have to let go a lot. I let go every year, but my classroom fills again. My home will not fill again.

So we both stand on the brink of a different kind of adulthood. He is ready to step off that cliff and fly. I am getting ready to watch because I know I don’t need to push. I do need to hold on to something because I will not fly if I follow and I know that I shouldn’t.

I want to pour his ear full of advice and reminders before he gets behind the wheel of my old minivan and drives away. Those are my neuroses, not his. I say them to myself. In my weaker moments, I say them to him and earn the eye rolls and choruses of, “I know, Dad!”

This past week, we shared college orientation. Appropriately, for many of the sessions, parents and their students were separated. The university stressed setting boundaries, allowing students to struggle, and assisting them in assisting themselves. I could have given those speeches.

That doesn’t change the way I feel this morning. I take lots of pictures. I have become nostalgic about times that were harried, hurried, and hard. But my children were children then. I was in charge and felt a semblance of control.

I am not in control anymore and that is a scary thing. As a teacher, I like being in control. As a parent, it makes me feel safe. That is an illusion, my rational self tells me. My children are ready to have full control. I know this.

Control is the way I fend off the worry. If I am in charge, then my child stays in my arms or behind the glass. Yet he must leave the comfort of the nursery and make his way into the world, where anything can happen.

And anything will happen. He will have scrapes, big and small. I will, too. He must grow up and walk out of that door. I must remain and watch. I will get used it. It will take a while. My friends tell me that I will come to like it.

Not yet.