Tag Archives: moms

You Will Miss Them When They are Gone

I love being part of the village helping you raise your kids. Herds of small or even not so small people trampling through my yard, messing up my house, and eating my cookies makes me deep down soul level happy. I may not love them when they raise the decibel level around here or pick a fight or take the last cookie, but make no mistake, your kids are my kids too. These kids who I have fed and sheltered, who have teased me and tested me, who I learned to love even though they will never belong to me, are part of my parenting story. If you are really helping to raise a village, you need to know just how much fun it is to watch these kids grow along with yours, how much angst you might feel at their missteps, how much pride in their success. You also need to know just how much you will miss them when they are gone.

Guide to parenting through college | Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

I may be used to the idea of my kid being in college, but I have yet to stop scanning soccer fields and hallways for his friends’ familiar faces. Old habits and fond feelings die hard. All of those kids who used to hang around my living room teasing and talking and eating are now safely nestled on college campuses miles from here. I appreciate now more than ever how those kids lead me to the parts of my kids that I’m not privy to in my role as my mom. Through these kids, I saw my own brood as the friends, confidantes, soul sisters, and even “brothers from another mother” that they are. They were the keys to answering the question of who my kids really are without the lens of blind parental devotion. Sure, they also trampled my gardens, ate me out of a retirement plan, and sometimes broke my kids’ hearts, but they were important parts of our story. Through them and their relationships with my kids, I could almost see what lay around the corner, the hints of who my kids would become. Of course these kids, the ones not of my loin, also served up some stellar opportunities for me to exercise patience at a semi-professional level, but that’s just how this village works.

This is also how this village works: I was invested in their future selves. Sure, my stake was not situation critical like with my own crew, but I wanted then and still want now the best for these kids. I held their Mommas’ hands while they worried themselves sick over each and every one of these crazy kids. The one who tried to feed her friends dog pop at a tea party, the boy who jumped off the roof to test a theory he had about spontaneous flight, the girl who almost killed my son when she showed him how to make a model rocket: I was there for those stories, I brought band-aids and washed up and attended to those crises.

And the one who had a special diet of only dairy despite her mother’s entreaties and the one who slept at her parents’ bedside until middle school and even the one who wet the bed for so long he took 2 sleeping bags on campouts, I was privy to all those stories too. I made time to hear their moms pace and worry. I listened, loved, and listened some more.

“Surely, they’ll outgrow this by college,” we all reassured each other, because their moms have the goods on my kids too. Childhood is a string of bad decisions, weird obsessions, and difficult questions punctuated by birthday parties, playdates, and vacations. Good villagers stick together, pray novenas, answer worried phone calls, and deliver baked goods and bon mots to calm each other’s fears. So much of early parenting is wishing you had a time machine or some kind of lens to see into the future. We were all just hoping that this all turns out all right in the end despite the growing evidence to the contrary. So we did what villagers do best: we circled the wagons, we held hands, we lifted each other up, and we hoped for the best.

Well, you know what? These kids did outgrow most of their crazy by college. The verdict is not totally in yet, but things look positive. Each and every one, despite the long nights, deep worries, uncertain outcomes, and problematic episodes, is walking a path to somewhere. They are all in different colleges—some fancy, some not as fancy—and they are all doing the thing we hoped they’d do, the figuring out who they are when we aren’t around.

I loved being part of the village that nurtured and grew these young people. Heck, I still love it even though our time together is shorter, my windows for seeing them narrowed greatly. I love the glimpses I get of each one of them every so often. There they are in all of their beautiful young hopeful selves poised mid-transformation right on the cusp of that chrysalis change. I love seeing the early seeds that were planted start to bear some fruit. Huh, I think, that one really did make it to play college soccer.  Aw, I say, look at him still playing his music in his college band.

Guide to parenting through college | Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

One of our villagers performing in his college band

For their part, these young people are doing what kids do if things go well: moving up, moving on, moving away. But they will always be part of my parenting story, part of my village, part of my life.

I am immensely proud of my villagers and what we have accomplished launching these kids out into the world. And I am even more proud of these kids, but I do miss them now that they are gone.

-Erin

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