Last Minute Parenting

 

These days I am intermittently filled with pride and overwhelmed with sadness. I always knew, but never quite believed that this moment would come; that my daughter would grow up. Periodically, I saw it happening. My iPhone reminded me every year of how much smaller she looked the year before, but this feels too sudden. How did it happen?

I am counting the months until my daughter moves out of the house — not in a good way. Soon I’l be counting the weeks, and then the days. “How can I make the most of this time?” I ask myself, “how do I soak her in before I send her off?”

And my biggest questions, “have I done it right?” and “have I done enough?” Rationally I know that I won’t lose contact with my daughter when she goes to college, but the combination of her surging independence and desperate need to impart everything I know in the next ten months leaves me furiously scrambling to make sure she is ‘ready.’

When my daughter has a conflict with a friend I move through all of my own friendship struggles like a slideshow in my brain and tell her, “It doesn’t matter what they do. You need to make sure that whatever you do has integrity.” As I share this lesson I am reminded of the countless times I acted dishonorably. 

When the topic of Fentanyl-laced pot comes up I look anxiously at my daughter, hoping that she’d never take a toke off of a joint from an unknown source. As we talk about the risks she tells me, “Well, I don’t smoke weed, but if I did, I’d get my own from a dispensary.” Phew. I am reminded of the innumerable stupid choices I made in high school and college, eschewing the clear voice at the back of my head telling me not to risk it.

Every day I think of things I want to make sure my daughter understands before she leaves — how to really scrub the toilet; how to make good coffee; how to save and invest her earnings; to be on time; to communicate respectfully; how to write a resume; to join clubs at college; to trust herself; to try new things. 

And every time a lesson comes into my mind I have to soothe myself. “Laura, you’ve had eighteen years,” I tell my panicky mother-self, “she knows what she knows.” I have to trust that my daughter will keep learning along the way. Just like I did. She’ll learn from the world, from her own mistakes, from the wisdom of all the other people she’ll come across in her life. She has her her own internal wisdom and all the micro-lessons I’ve done my best to share along the way.

My friend Linda is seventy-five. Every morning she sends me a text message. Usually it’s a GIF with a prayer for a good day or a funny image of rain clouds or a traffic jam. Every day her sweet image includes the letters, “GM” which stands for Good Morning. Linda has been doing this tiny ritual for months. I love it. It’s a daily reminder that I am loved and that someone is thinking about me.

Even though my daughter still lives at home, our time together is limited; I always want more. A few weeks ago I started my own version of Linda’s daily affirmation for her. I think of the real things I want my daughter to know — that she is loved, that she is good enough, that I am proud of her — and so many more. Whatever piece of wisdom or sentiment that comes into my heart at the moment, I write. In a very short text, I write a GM message. The act comforts me. Maybe she’ll read these texts or maybe she won’t, but I hope that even if she doesn’t read the text every day, she’ll know what it is — a sign that she is loved. 

The first time I wrote the GM text, my daughter texted me from her basement bedroom to ask me what the text was. “It’s just something I’m doing,” I wrote back, “you’ll get one every day.” I waited and watched the three dots on my screen.

“Thanks Mommy,” she texted back. Message received.