“Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to
handle conflict by peaceful means.” Ronald Reagan
I sure could use Mr. Reagan’s guidance and wisdom right about now.
The
kidlet and I aren’t playing together quite as nicely like we normally do.
My
mind is full of all of the minute details that need addressing before she heads
off to university in ten days.
Her
mind is everywhere else, especially on the ‘big picture’: “In ten days, I’m
moving out and I’ll be living on my own; you can’t tell me what to do anymore.”
Oh,
child-o-mine! If only life were that simple!
Living
on your own? Not even close. But I don’t need to point that out to her in order
to know it’s true. She’ll find it out soon enough.
I
think back to the days leading up to when I was getting ready to head out over
three hours away from home to start college at the ripe old age of seventeen. I’m
sure there were a lot of details that wouldn’t have even been close to being on
my radar, but for some reason, I don’t think things were as complicated back
then as they are now. They certainly weren’t as jaw-droppingly (if that isn’t a
‘real’ word, it should be) expensive as they are today.
Two
textbooks. That’s all we bought in the campus bookstore when we visited the
campus a couple of weeks ago so that she get her student card and beat the
lineups that are certain to exist during orientation week. Just under two
hundred dollars and a whole lot of ‘What the?’ later, I realized that even as
prepared as I am for the financial side of things, there are still some items
on my Momma Bear Preparedness List that are going to need to be reassessed,
re-evaluated, and require a Tylenol or two.
There
are times when I am torn between feeling woefully inadequate and incredibly
over-prepared. I have a ‘game plan’ in my mind, but she keeps changing the
rules and the first-born in me is not happy.
I may
not have all the answers, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have at least some
of them.
I may not know everything there is to know about
programs of study and breadth requirements and course selection, but I do know
her better than she knows herself sometimes, and I honestly do have her best interest at heart when
I quietly suggest that she might want to rethink taking a German language
course as an elective.
I may be her mother, but I also like to
consider myself – when it is appropriate – one of her friends.
All of those truths aside, I’m finding it
rather difficult to adjust to the changes I see in my (once) little girl as
moving day approaches.
I understand that it’s my job as the parent
to set the boundaries and that it’s her job as the kid to try and expand them.
It’s her prerogative to ask questions.
It’s even her job to break some of the
rules on occasion.
I know, understand, and am working hard to
accept and work with the growing emergence of all of these lovely and now daily
occurrences. But, there’s only so much a grown-up can take…
I am of the opinion that Oprah Winfrey
expressed recently: “I am a woman in process. I'm just trying like everybody
else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life
is never dull.”
Ain’t that the truth!
As I struggle to find a way to explain the
logic of my allocation of the funds I set aside in an RESP, I am also fighting
the urge to put her in her place and tell her that it is not ‘her’ money. Clarifying that the money in that fund is money
that I have been working hard to invest and set aside as my contribution towards
her education and completion of her undergrad studies is a mute point; it’s her
perception versus my reality and the two are probably never going to meet.
Where there was once a pony-tailed, blue-eyed blonde little girl who trusted in
everything I said is now a teenager-in-transition whose questions comes across
more as accusations. It’s a dance we are both going to have to learn to adjust
our movements to as the music of our lives and our relationship changes.
Slipping through my fingers; the hourglass
says ten days but it feels like the sand has already run out.
Ten days.
Ten days until her bedroom is vacant except
for the stuff she leaves behind in her dresser drawers and hidden away in the
crawl space behind her closet.
A week-and-a-bit until there are fewer
groceries to buy, less of a mess in the kitchen to clean up every night, and a
smaller weekly grocery bill.
Ten more sleeps until her bed stays made,
pillows and teddy bears resting comfortably and undisturbed until she comes
home on Thanksgiving weekend for a visit (also known as a ‘laundry run’ in
post-secondary parental circles).
We are managing the rough waters these
days, but I am not a happy camper. I constantly struggle with trying to make
sure that I am making decisions that need to be made, and making them despite
her shift in actions and attitude rather than to spite her. As Indian actor
Emraan Hashmi confesses, so do I: “I am a bit difficult to be around sometimes. I can be
stubborn on a lot of things, and I'm set, but I can also adapt in a conflict
situation and don't hold on to an ego. I end up seeing the larger good and
adapt to it…. I may come across as a cold person, but I am extremely
sentimental.”
* * * * *
From this single
parent’s perspective, I know that I will look back on these last few weeks with
my youngest child and sometimes wish I could do all of it all over again.
I’m also wise
enough to know that there are going to be the times that I am going to
gleefully forget all about that stuff and do the dance of joy that my house is
staying clean and that I will no longer open the fridge to find just a quarter
of an inch of milk left in the milk carton.
You take the
good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life,
or something along those lines.
Ten days.
It’s kind of
exciting that I can proclaim, and loudly, that I finally have an 'hourglass
figure'…
