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.

Reprise

I'm very pleased that two of my essays are featured in a wonderful new anthology, From the Heart: A Collection of Stories and Poems from the Front Lines of Parenting, published by Write for Charity. All profits from the sale of this book will benefit children's charities, including St. Jude's Children's Research Center. To find out more about the book and how you can purchase it, please click on the Write for Charity link under our favorites below. As a sneak preview of the book, here's a reprise of Snacks, which first appeared here on Tasty Sauce in 2009. Bon appetit!

Snacks

Both pantry doors are opened wide and my son, Eric, studies the contents. He sighs. He closes the pantry, opens the refrigerator and stares inside for a while before sighing again and closing the fridge. He reopens the pantry, as if something new has miraculously appeared in the three minutes since he last looked. The question will come next.

“What do we have to eat?” Eric asks me.

“Chips?” I say.

He shakes his head

“Cheese? Crackers?”

“Nah,” he says. With a shrug he goes upstairs to his room without a snack.

Fifteen minutes later his brother, Greg, does the same thing: the pantry, the fridge, the pantry, the question. I offer suggestions that get rejected.

“There’s nothing good to eat,” he says. “I’m going over to Mark’s house.”

I never have the right snack in the house. If they want chips and salsa, I have cheese and crackers. If they want cookies, I have chips and salsa, since I stocked up from when they wanted those before. I buy potato chips and they want peanuts. I buy peanuts. They want Cheetos. I buy Cheetos. They want Wheat Thins. I buy Wheat Thins and they crave apples, but I’ve thrown out the apples that rotted in the fruit bin from the last time they asked for them.

You’d think by now the pantry and fridge would be so full of stuff they used to want, that sooner or later I’d hit the jackpot and everything they could possibly want would be ready and waiting. But no, I always come up short in the snack department.

I find myself wondering what Mark’s mom has in her pantry, and I decide to call her.

“So Kathy, “ I say, coming right out with it, “What kind of snacks do you have for the kids after school?”

“Nothing they ever want,” she says with a tone of exasperation I’m familiar with.

“Well, what are they eating right now?” I ask, desperate to know what perfect snack my son has found there.

“Oh,” she says. “The two of them stared into the pantry for ten minutes. Then they did the same thing with the fridge. Pretty soon Mark said they were going over to Jimmy’s house and off they went. I don’t think they ever ate anything.”

Still obsessed, I call Jimmy’s house and ask Mary what the kids are eating.

“Nothing,” Mary says. “I think all three of them are on their way to your house.”

I swell with pride. For once I must have the best snacks! I can’t wait to see what they’ll eat.

Meanwhile, Eric is back at the pantry, and I’m feeling more confident now. Bring on “the question”. But before he can ask it, Greg and his buddies swoop into the kitchen, grab Eric, and in a flash the four kids are outside playing street hockey. What about snacks? Don’t they want my snacks?

Deflated, I start to think about fixing dinner. I open the fridge and stare inside. I check the freezer. I open both pantry doors, searching for options.

The kids are right. There’s nothing good to eat in this house.

Copyright Liz Zuercher 2009