Let Go!

To be attentive, involved and inspiring without being overbearing, directive and threatening, how to navigate the tender waters of your children’s lives?  

 

Slipping in with a question can cause tidal waves of distress or just stress and confusion, asking it seems is enough to stir up currents in peaceful waters.  

They are still like calm lazy rivers flowing slowly in a direction unknown to all, steadily moving along in inches, small tiny little inches in a month!

 

My task it seems is to move the river along, yet is it?  My mothering buttons seem to engage as I watch the non-action.  I see no movement and I wonder out loud.  My asking seems to disrupt the peaceful river, like a cannon ball onto the glass surface!

 

The river is indignant, and it splashes on to me!  In the end the river settles back down to its unmoving silent water.  I sit near its banks in total befuddlement!  

Is it possible that there are rapids up ahead to this river, is there something around the bend that I am unaware of?  What is my role here and how can I approach the river that is beneficial for both of us?  

 

Do I stand silently in patience?  Patience, yikes that is so hard for me, silence is another, and non- directing I way fail at.  Be like a large weeping willow tree hanging over the lazy river.

 

What moves the river, what tells the river to go quickly and to make that bend?  Is the Universe using the parents to help move the river?  

 

It seems that the line gets fuzzy as the children turn into young adults the landscape changes, expectations shift, space gets crowded in their lives.  

 

Or is it crowded in mine?  Do I feel the weight of their inner tubes riding along on my back?  I am the lazy river?  Oh I see, I can be the lazy river and let them ride, or I can be the rapids or the waterfalls that kicks them off the tube!

 

I love that I am the river I am the one that I am waiting for again.  It is me, I do have the right to ask how long are you planning on floating along?

 

There is peace in having them all here under our roof, enjoyment in seeing them daily, to hear their laughter as they re-connect, like a prolonged family reunion.

It has been a month long vacation for some, a nice respite from college studies, but for the rest of us this is life.

 

Life as a Mother, it is me that allows them to be as they are, it is me that is the common denominator of how much they contribute or don’t, it is up to me as to how many floating inner tubes I allow on my surface.

  

I am hanging on, when I should be letting go!  Or I let them hang on when they are unsure of where it is that they should go.

  

It seems as parents we are always the ones that have to let go, to stop being the training wheels, the hands that forever hold on to the bike.  

Let go and kick them out of the nest.

 

I remember watching on Planet Earth, the video of teeny little birds floating down many yards and flopping on the ground, some didn’t even survive the fall, being amazed at nature!  That was what was required to learn how to fly!  The nest way up there and in order to get back they had to learn to use their wings.

In order for them to use the wings, they have to leave the nest!

 

Letting go is harder than holding on!

 

Letting go frees both sides!  A successful mother lets go, drops her hands and lets the child steer the bike!  We know that there may be falls mixed in with successful minutes of staying on, and in the end with practice the child learns how to balance on its own! 

 

Learns to be independent and knows self-confidence.

Ironically we teach them to leave us, to set forth on their own.

 

Letting go as a child to become an adult.

 

We were all shaky at first until we learned balance and with practice before long we get the lesson, we successfully navigate a new stage in life.  As long as we are willing to get back on the bike called life!

 

Where this bike will take us, what roads will we travel down, what bumps with toss us off, what sights will thrill us, that is all unknown, what we have to do is just be willing to shove off and balance the best we can!

 

Let go!