Preparing My Children to Leave Me

Listen to Carrie read the story here:

When my daughters were just a few months old, I called their other mom sobbing. Her concern turned to laughter when I managed to choke out, “They’re going to go to COLLLEGGGGE”

She assured me that was a long way away.

When they were 7, they asked if I would still live with them when they grew up. I looked at them and gently said, “You will not want me to live with you when you grow up.” They started to cry, and I assured them that I would be there as long as they needed me.

They are starting their sophomore year in college, in the city where they were born, far away from the city where I moved them to when they were 11 - the city where I grew up, and found the next chapter of my adult life.

From the time they were 4, it has been the three of us. I adore them. And this I know as one of the truest truths the world has ever known: they adore me.

Maybe too much.

I am their rock. I am the one they talk to about everything, from the deep complexities of life to relationships with their friends to their anxieties about their futures. Even about their frustration with something I have done. Definitely about their frustrations with each other.

I am their history teacher, their English teacher, their math teacher till about 6th grade, their editor, their therapist. I taught them the basics of cooking, but thank god their other mother is so much better at that than I am.

I listen. That is my job. To listen. To nod. To validate. To assure. To help them solve the problem.

They are remarkable, self-assured, intelligent, capable women.

Until it comes time to leave me.

Then they cling to me in their own ways, tell me they don’t want me to go home, or that they don’t want to go back.

One of them usually lets it spiral, and when I get frustrated and tell her to get some damned perspective, the other one steps in and tells me to be a bit more sympathetic.

But I am sympathetic. I sit there holding them and think, “You don’t understand. You have to be able to be on your own, so you can go on when I die.”

Let me say right here that I’m not dying. Not soon, anyway. That I know of. I’m healthy. My resting heart rate of 52 is lower than my age. I can stand to lose the COVID 20 I gained. I would celebrate the day I don’t have to deal with another sinus infection. And regularity is a problem. But I am not writing this because I somehow know of my imminent death.

I am writing this because I will die. We all die. And I had my children in my 30s, so they will be younger than I was when they lose their mom.

Their other mother - who is older than me - said this to me once, that she was glad they are twins so they would have each other when we are gone.

That’s why I was sobbing that day, all those years ago. It’s not that I knew they would leave me. It’s because I knew my job was to prepare them to live without me.

I am not sure that I’m doing this right. Every cell in my body wants to say, “Stay. Don’t grow up. Don’t follow your dreams. Or dream smaller. Don’t leave me.”

But that is not my job. My job is to help them live the best lives they can. With me as part of it, but not the center of it.

I’ve already told them I’m moving in with them to help raise their children. That seems to reassure them. (No idea if it will reassure their future spouses.)

So it was, a few weeks ago, on the eve of another leave-taking, as I comforted them while pushing them toward the plane.

And I went home, to write out my life, so someday they can hold that.

Next week, I’ll get back to writing about how the world is trying to kill us all too soon - and how hard we are trying to ignore that.

Missed the last couple of posts? Here’s my conversation with Colin Woodard from last week.

Is the American experiment doomed?

And here’s my post on how we are all boiling frogs when it comes to the truth of our world.

Truth is a thing. And the truth is, we are all boiling frogs.