FEATURE — In my left hand I hold a small, cream paper-backed notebook. It is one of my most prized possessions. Its cover is worn and speckled with layers of smudged fingerprints; its lined pages are filled with lunch receipts and lists.
The lists are the goals and ambitions of each of my three boys over the last eight years. We write them down the week or so before school starts each year. Just me and them, one by one, over lunch. They come up with the list. I am their scribe.
Some of what they say is lofty. We’ve had everything from making the Dean’s list and doing triple flips to reading Harry Potter without help in the second grade.
This year, my high school sophomore says he will “wake up on time for school at least 90% of the time.” The same son says he will be “80% positive about school.” Like I said, lofty.
Some of what they say is not.
One year, one boy wanted nothing more than to appear on a jumbotron. Any jumbotron. Anywhere. That same year, his four-year-old brother aspired to “wipe his own bum.” I didn’t know at the time that once he’d done it twice, he’d consider it good, and would resist the newfound autonomy for the remainder of the year. “Just because I can, doesn’t mean I want to,” he explained later. I mean, he kind of has a point.
Now that this year’s lists have been recorded in my precious book, the time has come to send each of my boys back to school.
First, the oldest across the country to the Midwest for his sophomore year of college. Next, the middle across town to the out-of-district high school for his sophomore year. And finally, this week, the youngest to our neighborhood middle school for his seventh-grade year.
I won’t lie. I’m glad for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love my boys and our time together in the summer – traveling, staying up late watching movies in the basement, sleeping in, going to the pool, not having to set an alarm and not getting peppered with reminder dings for school pickups. But come August, I crave the structure of school as much as I crave the looseness of summer when it’s May.
Even still, there are other emotions.
Brooke Shields recently shared with the world her struggle saying goodbye again to her college sophomore. “Turns out the second time is NOT the charm,” she captioned of an emotional video of her in the moments after her daughter drove away, car packed with her belongings, for Wake Forest. While the actor said she was struggling with watching her girl go – again – she also acknowledged that it’s what we are parenting towards: raising healthy, strong humans who can go out successfully in the world and create their own lives.
My greatest hope in motherhood is that I work myself out of the job. Eventually.
After returning home from the Midwest, having deposited my boy and his collection of giant blue IKEA duffle bags with all of his earthly belongings, I was feeling a bit like Brooke Shields on the inside. I was soft and tender and full of hope for him in this new year of school.
As I walked my Aussidoodle in the glen just north of my house on the morning after my return, I remembered The Next Right Thing podcast episode a dear friend had sent me while I was gone and cued it up. In her three-minute “staying prayer for parents,” Emily P. Freeman spoke to many of the feelings in my heart. And offered salve.
And in the hope they offer you some salve, too, as you say a goodbye – whether it is to a child going off to serve in some other part of the world, a child going off to college, or a child simply going back to school down the street – I thought I’d share some of what Emily said in her beautiful prayer:
- As we send our [children] off into the world, make our feet steady to stay behind, sure-footed, confident, and rooted in peace.
- As we pray for our growing up children to find good friends, may you bring friends to our own side to remind us we’re not alone.
- If insecurity, fear or disappointment knock on our newly quiet household door, may we be still with our questions rather than turn away toward the activity of a busy life.
- If we receive calls from our far away [child], though there may be tears and heartbreak on the other line, may we not set out to fix.
- May we be patient and curious.
- May we remember what our children need more than answers is to know they’re not alone and they’ve got what it takes.
So, good luck, mamas [and dads] in this time of back to school, however you feel. And good luck to your children, whether their ambition is to make the Dean’s list or to wipe their own bum.
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