Exactly Who Is Growing Up?

I just got a text: “I am sick take care of me L.” My first thought was, ‘should I get on a plane now and go to New York?’ I know it’s silly, I know she can take care of herself, and she will have to. All four roommates are now sick. She sounded so good just yesterday. Welcome to the final semester of senior year.

I am in awe of just how much I love my daughter. Even when I want to kill her I love her. This makes for a sometime schizophrenic episode inside my head and heart. This bond is stronger than my attitudes, beliefs, wishes for things to be different, disappointments, frustrations, and fears. I realize that everything is perfect. I have finally become a grown-up. I no longer want to control this ‘no longer’ child or even make her life better for her – that is now her job. Not that I won’t help when I can and when I feel it is appropriate. When I volunteered to go to NY to be “mom,” inside I was saying please say you really don’t need me there – I have so much on my plate – I love you, I want you well, I’d love to help you and if you were here I’d make chicken soup – but please say, ‘no – it’s okay.’ The text came: “No, it’s okay.” I laughed.

The joy is ineffable. I look at or even think about pictures of her sweet year-old face smeared with tomato sauce, or the sultry, hair-blown-back professional photo that my ex-husband’s second wife had taken of her at approximately age 17, or the laughing half-face photo taken within the last year by a roommate, and I realize that this young woman, no matter what, is on her own personalized, one-of-a-kind journey of discovery, and I feel privileged and blessed when she lets me in for a sweet and sometimes deep and probing conversation. Those moments are the ones I cherish. I realize that mommy time – for all intents and purposes – is done. It’s not that I won’t help if I need to, but I can no longer ‘control/help.’ She must now ‘control/help’ herself, and she is more than capable of doing that. I believe I have turned in my helicopter wings – thank God!

I remember when she was younger, begging my ex-husband to take her as much as possible. She still wanted to hold my hand, sit in my lap, let me tickle her, laugh with her and share enthusiastic ‘oh my Gods,’ and ‘how could that bes,’ and ‘wows,’ as we read the Harry Potter books out loud to one another and waited together in lines as each new book or movie came out. I knew that wouldn’t last forever. I knew that at some point she would rather spend time with her friends than with me or her father. As it should be. If things go as they might, when she’s older she could very well want to add some of that back in, but now she is growing and developing and truly becoming herself.

I love to watch this taking place. I love to hear that she and her roommates signed the contract for their new Brooklyn apartment. I actually loved it when she both told and asked me “Listen, I can just forge your signature,” on the rental application information page so that we wouldn’t have to do another back and forth to get this new apartment going since the first one was lost to a higher bidder. I loved getting her ‘by-the-way’ question about the difference between Scottish and Irish oatmeal because she hadn’t made her oatmeal cookies for a while and decided that she wanted to make some to take to the first evening of her Gotham Writers humor writing workshop. I loved the spontaneous laugh that emitted from her when I said she would be popular after showing up with cookies. It surprised me that she really hadn’t thought about that.

I love to hear her laugh – her laugh is full, authentic, rich, contagious. On her ‘step-mother’s’ website – Life by Me – Sarah was told she could post an entry. Her posting was entitled “Laughter.”

I will send her light and love, and maybe a card, and trust that she can and will take care of herself and that in a day or two she will be better, ready for her final college semester to begin, and ready to move into the new Brooklyn apartment.

I am a lucky, lucky woman. I appreciate my daughter. I appreciate my life. I appreciate my friends. I appreciate my good fortune. I appreciate my foibles. I appreciate my failures. I appreciate this opportunity to publicly say how much I love my daughter and that I am so glad that I married my ex-husband so that we could be the doorway through which Sarah Mykel got to enter the world.