Letting Go

I spent the day painting. No, don’t get all excited. I didn’t suddenly develop an new artistic skill. I have trouble drawing a line. No, my son is moving into his friend’s apartment and I painted his room. Isn’t that what all good Moms do? He’s busy going to grad school and getting his life together and I’m doing not much so it just made sense. This way he gets to move into the apartment sooner and I get to clean his room. It’s not that I want him to move out. Well, I do and I don’t. He’s a man now and that fact gets in the way of another fact: that he is and always will be ‘my baby’. He’s reading this now and groaning. I get it. Mothers are supposed to stand back and let their kids go off into the world. We trained them for it and there comes a time when we need to see if the training took. It isn’t always easy to tell. No matter how many time you tell your kids about the stupid mistakes you made when you were their age, kids need to make mistakes of their own. In fact, if you tell them too specifically about some of the stupid things you did they’ll use the information as a primer and do the same stupid things. “Hey, that sounds cool; I think I will jump off that bridge! My Mom survived.” Sounds reasonable. Trust me: never admit to your child that you ever tried drugs! Any drug! You never took so much as an aspirin for pain! Your very survival is an enticement. Never tell them about the tenement apartment building with the bathtub in the kitchen and the rats in the corner dumpster because they will interpret that as permission to live in the dumpiest apartment in the worst neighborhood. “My Mom survived.” Never tell your kids that you lived on bologna sandwiches & coleslaw for a semester because they will not hear the part about how sick that made you. Don’t tell them how you hitchhiked to classes because they will only laugh at the story of the guy with his open fly and visible parts. Never tell them how you neglected to study for your finals freshman year and were about to freak out when the National Guard opened fire at Kent State half a country away and your exams were cancelled because they WILL NOT STUDY! Just tell them you love them and, if they aren’t already grimacing, tell them you want them to be happy. And paint their room so they know you mean it… even if it kills you.