Our son and daughter both have their driver’s licenses now, and while I wouldn’t want it any other way, I’m not looking forward to the extra time, convenience, or efficiency in my schedule. Don’t get me wrong, our lives are as full as the next family’s, and sleeping another half hour in the morning because I don’t have to take our son to school isn’t a bad thing, but it’s definitely a trade-off.
I already miss the time with our kids in the car. I miss the conversations. I miss the in-the-moment stories they tell. I miss hearing them singing along with the radio when they think I’m not listening. I miss the insignificant moments where we’re just in the same place at the same time.
This kind of time is glue. It is the white space of our lives that creates meaning – even when we’re not paying attention.
It is possible to lament the loss of the place we’ve been at the same time we celebrate where we’re going.
I have a superstition that doesn’t allow me to let my kids leave the house without telling them to ‘drive carefully’. I council them in an upbeat, chirpy way but deep down, I have a worry that if I don’t say it every time, something bad will happen. I guess that’s the nature of a superstition. It’s an innocent bit of magical and illogical thinking. It comes from a story my mom used to tell about me when I was a child.
The stories we repeatedly tell our children about their youth are less important for their details and more important for their messages. My mom tells the story of me as a little girl when we were at a pool together. I was about 3. My mom had a gift, perhaps more than most parents would, for nurturing the strong will and independence that were already core to my personality. It was in this nurturance that she held herself back from reminding me, as I got up to walk from one side of the pool to the other, to ‘be careful’. Predictably, I walked right into the pool. I came up coughing and sputtering still holding the crackers I’d been carrying with me, lamenting only that, ‘My cwackers got wet!’. I’ve always heard it less as a story about my challenges with small details (like pools), and more about unflappability and single-mindedness. We can bring our own meanings to things, right? But I’ve also turned that into a superstition of my own. Reminding children to be careful can only be a good thing, right? Could our reminding possibly inoculate them from danger? Of course not. And yet…
But back to driving. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and I’m not one to wish that we could trap our children at home and avoid all forward movement. They need to stretch their wings, develop, and live their lives. My husband and I get to go out to dinner at the places our children don’t like to go. We can keep more of our own schedule. We don’t have to drive them to that 9pm soccer practice. But we miss the white spaces where we are just with them, going places.
Research has shown that parent happiness dips when children are toddlers and teenagers. These are the two times in a family where the children are most pushing the envelope, expressing their autonomy, and finding their voices. Good and important times, though challenging.
In addition to the moments where my husband and I watched our daughter and then our son drive away from the Secretary of State’s office on their birthdays, newly minted licenses in hand, I also met my son recently at the doctor’s office. It’s a strange and wonderful thing to meet your child somewhere – to have them drive up in their car and meet you, having come from someplace on their own. It was a no-big-deal doctor appointment for my son. We are in this middling place where I need to be there to fill out the paperwork and ask questions about care or treatment, but I’m only necessary for about another 10 minutes, figuratively speaking.
It is a middling place of transition. But aren’t they all with parenting? Every moment we have with our children is a middle place and a transition because they change so fast. We change so fast. We all grow up. The times we spend together will change. We need to find new white space, new meaning, and new intentionality in how we stay connected.
As a young parent, I read a terrific book which said that as children stretch their wings, our job as parents is to stay. To be a place of consistency, continuity, and presence. A place they can come home to and a place to be safe as they increase their reach and test their footprints in the world. And so we stay.
As I write this, we’re in the middle of an ice storm. With our son as a new driver, we don’t want him to drive in the ice, but we want the decision to be his. We are in a middling time, when we need to give direction, but we also need to back off. We’re working on finding the right balance all the time, in every decision.
I don’t generally find nostalgia helpful, but times were simpler when all we had to worry about were diapers, bath time, and ensuring that they didn’t wear too many more sweet potatoes than they ate for dinner.
Every age that our children have been, has been my favorite, because I didn’t know any better about what was still to come. This age is no different. They’re coming of age and I don’t have to drive them around any more. They will meet me at appointments or they won’t need me at all, at least not in the same ways. But we will always need each other in the ways that count the most. In supporting the stretch and the flight out of the nest. In supporting each other in becoming all that we will each become, throughout our lives.
I don’t want more time, more convenience, or more efficiency. No thank you. I would be glad to keep driving our children around, but I’m also glad they are growing up. Yes, it is possible to lament the loss of the place we’ve been at the same time we celebrate where we’re going. So I will continue to do both. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” ~Havelock Ellis
