Letting Go

I've been raising kids for 29 years, many of them as a single parent. Now, the last baby is heading off to college. What have these three decades taught me? Not much. And also everything.

I became a parent for the first time in May of 1995. Clinton had not yet met Lewinsky; Rachel and Ross were just becoming Friends; the only Kardashian on TV was the one defending O.J.; and every day I lugged a Filofax and rolls of quarters to work, in case I needed to use a pay phone.

In other words, I became a parent a long time ago. Before momfluencers and Google. Before lactation rooms, paid time off, paternity leave¹, leaning in, opting out, or any sort of cultural acceptance of a work/life balance, so you could get fired—I did get fired—for trying to be a juggler. Before all of my friends had had babies except for Kammi, my childhood best friend, who told me what my infant absolutely needed for survival (milk, diapers, love) and what was superfluous (everything else.) Before, one might say—okay, I might say—I was ready to become a parent, having not yet stepped foot into a therapist’s office to process my own traumas and avoid imposing their fumes on others. (Sorry, kids. I’ll make it up to you when you have your own kids. Like every grandparent before me.)

My second child was born in 1997, my third in 2006, all from the same father, with whom I split the day I drove our eldest, by myself, to his first year of college. I then became a struggling solo mother to my remaining teen daughter and her seven-year-old brother. When seven morphed into eleven, my ex reappeared and started sharing custody. That’s the back story.

But now—flash of lightning, clap of thunder—here I am, ordering extension cords, a shower caddy, and an extra-long mattress topper for the final child, who leaves for college in eleven days, but who’s counting?

Okay, yes. Fine. I’m counting. More like subtracting. In fact, if you do the math in your head, as I did last week during a rare four-day stretch when I had all three of my kids under one roof, you will take your age, 58, subtract 29—the age of your eldest, which was also coincidentally the same age you were when giving birth to him—and realize your life is now perfectly bifurcated into two equal halves: 29 years of not being a parent, 29 years of being one. And though you’ve lost track, over the course of those parenting decades, of the number of sandwiches you’ve made, emergency rooms you’ve visited, parent-teacher conferences you’ve attended, and barf-covered duvets you’ve dutifully laundered at 3 am, the one thing you do know is that twenty-nine years flew by too fast. Twice!

And what did all of those years of parenting teach you? Honestly, not much. But also one crucial thing, which might be the milk, diapers, and love of surviving adulthood: