I've started this blog entry about a half dozen times since Mother's Day. I find it difficult to pull my thoughts together around the topic I want to write about. It's one that requires some time to process through... and my time is often interrupted by the reality of my life. However, I am persistent...
When I was 18, I couldn't wait to fly away to the freedom that I envisioned college offering me. I was dating a boy that I liked a lot but I was ready to be away from the restrictions I felt at home. College was a goal I had always known I would achieve, and here I was right at the very edge of attaining that goal, running low on patience with the mundane world around me. I was ready to leave the childish arena of high school behind and enter into the adult realm of higher education, ready to follow my dreams. I had the path all planned and laid out... it was clearly going to be a straight shot from here to the exciting career, white picket fence, handsome husband, wonderful children, and golden retriever in the yard. Of course, that was all before I learned about detours, unexpected change, and Plan B the hard way. But at that moment, anyhow, it all seemed clear. I was here, and I knew where I was going. Nothing was getting in the way.
My relationship with my mother had always been rocky, at least for as long as I could remember it. She didn't understand me. She didn't trust me. She didn't know who I was or where I was going. At least that's what I thought. She had a hands-off parenting style and didn't really get too involved in the activities I participated in throughout high school, although looking back, she was more involved than I gave her credit for. I had this whole other life, this whole other world that I was a part of that she knew nothing about. I was intelligent. I was a leader. I was headstrong (yeah, surprising, I know). I always felt like I had a good sense of right and wrong and that I should be allowed to do what I wanted to, without being told what to do. What eighteen year old *doesn't* feel that way?
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Looking back at the arguments and the emotional distance, I can't help but wonder what she thought about all of that. Did she cry to herself at night over how things should have been yet weren't? Did she wonder what to say but couldn't find the words? Did she realize when she made mistakes but just not quite know how to make things right again? Did she decide to just let me follow my own path because she knew that I was going to anyways and that sometimes the best lessons learned are the ones that come from experience? Were there lessons from her own life that she wanted to share because she wanted to make my life easier, to help me avoid some of the mistakes that she had made? Did she talk to her friends about what to do, commiserating over the trials and tribulations of raising teenagers? What was her vision for how this relationship should have looked, this one like no other, this one between mother and daughter? I wonder if a lot of the conflict came from the fact that perhaps we were more alike than either one of us was willing to admit. I'll never know, because by the time I was ready to find all of that out, to talk to her about my own experiences with my own daughter, it was too late.
Jumping ahead two and a half decades, I find myself in the same position with my own daughter. As I reflect on how things are, it is almost uncanny how similar the situation is, even if I am in the reverse role now. I can ask all of those questions above because they come from my own experience. My own daughter is intelligent, and headstrong, and a leader (don't know *where* she might get that from!). She is part of a whole other world that I know very little about. And she is getting ready to leap out into the adult world, seeking her way, much as I did so many years ago. I think it is time that I let go and let her follow her own path, trusting that she will make the right decisions, and letting her know that I am always available when things don't turn out exactly as she had planned. I will be as much a part of that as she will let me, but it is up to her. There are things I can teach her about herself that only I know, but she has to be ready. And when she is, the door will always be open and she will always be welcome. When you love someone, let them go... is that how the saying goes? It is a great love and sometimes it hurts like hell and it isn't easy... it's the hardest thing ever, actually. It gives me some perspective on what my own mother must have felt. There is no greater love than that of a mother for her daughter, even if the road is rocky at times.
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