LETTING GO

One Sunday afternoon, I walked into the house to find Adam, our almost-eighteen-year-old-son, sprawled across the living room floor, working on an English paper in front of the TV.

Nothing about the moment was different or unique, yet suddenly I didn't know whether to feel shock, awe, or a sense of relief that in a little over a month my baby boy will be finished with high school.

As I stood and watched him work... or was he watching the television?... I was blindsided by the passage of time. The nearly-six-foot of teenager spread-eagle in the middle of several pillows was a far stretch from the eight pound, twelve-and-a-half ounce bundle of joy the stork brought his parents so many years ago. Adam's now stocky, muscular frame, accustomed to delivering building materials for a local lumber yard, was more the body of a man than a child.

I couldn't move. Where did my little boy go?

I stood frozen to the spot, overwhelmed by my conflicting emotions. "He can't be this old," I thought. "This can't be happening." My heart felt as if it was going to come apart.

Funny... somehow I had convinced myself that it would be easier than this. I thought I'd know what to expect.

I guess I was wrong.

It's not like Adam's near-adult status was a sudden shock; after all, he has been in school for a dozen-plus years. I know how old he is... AND he's had a fierce case of Senioritis these last few months.

In addition, I'd spent the previous week making graduation plans. Our homeschool group has four fine young men walking the stage and the Moms had been working on the big event. Arrangements had been made with a local church, the program was tentatively set and the speaker confirmed. Invitations were scheduled to be picked out, Senior portraits taken, and the paperwork handed out for the special section of the local paper. Even the reception plans were coming together.

Yet I found myself blindsided by the reality of what I beheld: my heart saw a little boy laying on that floor... my eyes saw a man.

As I stood staring at my son, for a brief moment I thought that the situation should somehow be different. Wasn't there some easier way to prepare me for the shock of letting another bird fly from the nest?

I wanted to stomp my foot in frustration... even more I wanted to pretend that this wasn't happening. I wanted to believe that if I just closed my eyes and ignored the sight before me it would all go away.

I tried. It didn't.

For a second I wrestled with the thought that our culture has all this graduation stuff backwards. Shouldn't the party be for the parents who are struggling with setting their precious offspring free into the big, anything-is-possible-world? Isn't there some type of thanks or appreciation for the sacrifices made, the sleepless nights, and the miles (and miles... and miles) we've put on vehicles taking our kids here-n-there? Never mind all the money it cost to get our children this far...

... but, at the same time, the whole graduation thing really is the parents' way of marking the milestone. Why else would my testosterone-laden eighteen year old don a cap and gown and sit through an hour of hoopla that means more to me than it does to him? Yes, there has been the promise of food when it's over... but the whole thing seems to be decidedly more important to me than it is to my son.

Standing there that day watching my nearly grown child, it seemed like just yesterday when Adam was born, his umbilical cord wrapped around that precious neck. I remember my sigh of relief as the nurses took care of my too-blue-for-comfort newborn, then put the damp bundle in my arms, assuring this worried mother that her dimpled doll would be just fine.

In the blink of an eye, Adam was a couple of months old. Can it possibly have been so long since the morning Albert's grandmother came to visit and told me gently that sooner or later I was going to have to stop holding him all day long. I did... and she was right... it was my duty to let him learn to sleep in the bed, but part of me wishes that I could go back and hug my infant Adam just one more time.

In what seemed only a breath later there was a first tooth, then his first step. Soon he was running and playing in the sandbox just outside the back door, learning to ride a bicycle, then, in between fighting with his brothers, he was off to school.

Somewhere, when I wasn't looking, the baby I brought into this world grew into the fine young man I stood there watching.

And now he's to graduate from high school. Just the thought shakes me to the core. Yet the paradox of that Sunday, watching the no-longer-little-boy lay calmly in the middle of the living room floor, oblivious to my reverie, isn't lost on me.

All in one breath, I found myself faced with being amazed, disturbed, thrilled, surprised and in absolute awe of the fact that my baby is so close to being on his own.

And that's as it should be. Letting go isn't meant to be easy.

Jackie

Copyright 2004 by Jackie Zimmerer