So it's happening. Last post I wrote about the 10 year old wanting me to be boring around her friends... like do not draw undue attention. Be. The. Coat. Rack. Make yourself useful and nothing more.
Fine... I resolved to take it in stride. This is what I had been waiting for, right? I have longed for this day, an unravelling of the umbilicus before it strangled me to death. I remember when all three of them were little and they would pounce on me, like a weakened wildebeast straggling behind the herd, to exhausted to fight. There was never enough of me to go around, so much so that I lost myself for a good long while. There's still not quite enough of me to go around for the boys, but while I wasn't looking, she unwrapped herself. She has been picked to run the Marathon of Respect and Equality, something she has wanted to do for the last few years... school kids usually go down to watch the runners finish. This year she gets to run and I was talking about how I was going to juggle my work schedule to be there when she finished.
"Uh, mom, you don't have to be there..." she opens. "No, honey, I'll make it work" I say. The it hit's me..." um... unless you don't want me to be there" (thinking this could not possibly be true). She gives me a look of relief like I've finally gotten it and she didn't have to spell it out.
"Oh," I say.. "so you don't want anyone there to see you finish the big race? You've been wanting to run in this for years." She replies, "well my friends and teachers will be there"
Subtext: they are enough... I don't need you. The person I need to be proud of me at that moment is. not. you.
So here it is... the moment when the umbilicus begins to unravel and stretch. That bond that we forged when she is little, for the first 7 or 8 years of her life is all that will hold her to me for the next 10 or so years... it's going to stretch out while she floats away from me. I'm sure it will be strong enough to get us through, until she comes back to me.
This is the moment I was waiting for, her launch, getting a piece of myself back again.
It doesn't quite fit as nicely as it used to.
