Slipping Through My Fingers

Yesterday I went to my last school orientation. I have gone to thirteen school orientations — every one since kindergarten. My daughter is a senior in high school now and this hour-long session in her high school auditorium was my last parent orientation. As I left the building I felt nostalgic for the years that I took for granted, all those years when I was a needed player in all of the decisions, collaboration, registration, and management of my daughter’s life. 

One of my favorite songs is Slipping Through My Fingers by ABBA. Sometimes my daughter will play the song on the piano and sing along, smiling as she sneaks glances at me getting choked up by the words. My daughter and I both love the movie Mamma Mia. My favorite scene is when Meryl Streep sings that song to her daughter who’s preparing to get married. “Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning. Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile.” My daughter told me that the ABBA singer who wrote that was moved as he watched his daughter walk off to the school bus. I completely relate to this heart-wrenching moment. As a parent, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of these micro-moments of saying goodbye to childhood.

The days of me managing the minutiae of my daughter’s life are over. She doesn’t need that kind of help anymore. Sometimes I worry that my daughter’s independence means that she is cutting me out of her life. I take it as a personal rejection. But the truth is, she is a lot like me. My daughter is fiercely independent. She always has been. 

Every year my daughter takes on a little bit more responsibility and handles it. For several years now I’ve been less and less involved in the day-to-day operations of her life, not because I want to be, but because she doesn’t need or want me to be.

In a year my daughter will go to a college orientation or maybe embark on a gap year of some sort. She’ll learn how to navigate all of the pieces of whatever that new world entails. She might call and ask me for help, but I doubt it. 

Right now my daughter is applying to college. She’s also juggling three summer jobs and a packed social life. I rarely see her, and when I do I am desperate to know something about her life. What is her top college choice these days? Is she getting enough sleep? How was it saying goodbye to her friend who’s headed off to college? And then there are the things I need her to do — clean her room, call the doctor, email the teacher. The list goes on and on. The questions pile up until I am ready to burst.

I remember myself at that age. I too was fiercely independent. I never shared my thoughts about college, my boyfriend, or my friendship struggles with my mother. I wanted to do it all on my own. When I think back on those days I wonder why I rejected help and support.

 I have a complicated relationship with my mother and I have struggled with trusting her for most of my life. I’m sure that weighed into my need for my deeply clandestine adolescence. But it was also my personality. Even before my teens I was independent and committed to doing things on my own.

It felt good to figure things out, to accomplish things on my own. As I watch my daughter manage her multi-faceted life I can see her feeling a similar satisfaction. Occasionally she’ll send me a screenshot of something she’s proud of — an email correspondence with her high school counselor or a photo of a gap year program she’s thinking about doing. 

Sometimes my daughter and her friends hang out in our kitchen and talk about what’s going on in their world in front of me, every once in a while gracing me with the invitation to give an opinion or reflection. She gives me little glimmers of what she’s up to, tiny snippets like little breadcrumbs leading me towards her through a dark forest with no clear path.

I find myself wanting to smother my daughter with questions whenever I’m around her. Often I dive in before I’ve reflected on how that approach will play out and I end up alienating her, sending her in the complete opposite direction. 

When I have the foresight though, I bring myself back to my seventeen-year-old self. “Think about how you would have wanted your mother to engage with you,” I tell myself.

I close my eyes and imagine what environment would have made me feel like opening up to my mother. Calm. Spacious, yet loving. Unconditional. Accepting. As I sit here in the early morning anticipating the fifteen minutes I’ll have with my daughter in an hour when she wakes up, scarfs some breakfast, and races out the door to her job, I try to embody those characteristics. “Hang back,” I coach myself, “just be curious, but not too interested. Let her just be herself.” 

I sink deeper into our kitchen couch preparing myself to refrain from jumping up and giving my daughter a huge hug when she walks into the room. “Breathe deep and feel her energy before you pounce,” I counsel the panicky mommy bouncing around inside my chest.

Last night I went to a housewarming at a friend’s house. Her daughter is leaving for her second year of college tomorrow. As we stood admiring her more-adult-than-child daughter, my friend said, “This is probably the last summer she’ll come home.” I felt my heart muscle squeeze imagining that reality coming down the pike in my own household.

Sometimes I wish my daughter needed me more. It’s hard to take myself out of the equation. I worry that by giving my daughter distance I’m not doing my job as a mother. But I know that’s more about me than about her. My daughter needs what I needed — a wide open, calm, loving, unconditional, accepting place to land when she needs it. The jury’s out on if I can pull that off this morning. I’m going to try. All I can do is try and keep on trying.