Letting go

I have my checklist almost complete.

All day marathon of "Law and Order". Check.
Comedy station on my XM radio. "Check
Lots of dirt to spread around my (very wet) garden. Check.
Newest bestseller by Ann Lamott. Check.

I will need all of these tomorrow and the days following because around 5 PM I put our youngest child, E, on a plane that will take her to London. She'll be gone for 11 days.

It is hard being 17 and totally terrific. What with all the great grades, the constant athletic achievements, there is a lot of pressure. Also, it's tough to continue hating your mother, which is the first job of all teeange girls. I know. I did it, too. We all do it because deep down we're terrified that we'll become just like her. And most of the time we're so busy fighting that we do exactly that, become like someone we don't want to be. Who was it that said, "What you resist, persists?"

I've been trying to figure out something to say to her, write to her, lie to her and let her know that I won't be doubled over with grief over letting her get on a plane and fly halfway across the world - without even her dad with her.

I know I'm suppose to be in this generation that has all these enlightened views about parenting. I have a friend who is like Lorelei on "Gilmore Girls" and she and her daughter have coffee and talk all the time. I really hate her, sometimes, when she chirps about shopping and all that.

E and I tried shopping together. But I do all the wrong things. I do stupid things like pointing out stuff that will look great on her. I compliment her on her hair. I ask her opinion on shoes that I want to wear. She looks at me with those great, steady eyes and (not so) patiently will say, "Yes, mother.." just like I use to say to her when I dragged her through shopping malls and she pointed out stuff for me to look at. I was too busy, too often, trying to get home, get the dinner started, trying to "do" all those things moms do.

Funny, I just didn't see the moment when the roles would reverse.

I have one friend who has kindly said, "they have to hate you, otherwise it hurts too bad for them to leave you" She's had three daughters so she should know. Now she spends vacations with her daughter and grandkids and thinks it marvelous. So maybe that is in the future for us.

Tomorrow will be just another step for her to take and one that I cannot take with her, at least not in the same direction. She is going and I'm staying. She has a passport not only to another country but to another phase of her life, one that she has been headed all this time. And while I can be present, I cannot really be with her for that is the call of adulthood, to do it on your own steam.

I am, on every level, so deeply proud of her. She's a completey together kid. Often after she speaks in fluent spanish or solves some math problem that would stump NASA, her dad and I will look at each other and wonder how this force came from us. We kind of dumbly made our way into parenthood and we've been ambling around, making things up as we go.

Kind of cool to see that our missteps have taken at least someone in the right direction.