This column is the latest in a series on parenting children in the final years of high school, “Emptying the Nest.” Read the previous installment, about being freed from motherhood’s mundane tasks, here.
After weeks of preparing myself for the emotions of “the last first day,” the start of my youngest child’s senior year was distinctly anticlimactic.
I did make her a hot breakfast, over which she received my bittersweet reminiscences with mildly amused good humor before returning to her room to get dressed. Like an over-scheduled but still gracious celebrity, she did allow a few seconds for photos at the door and then she was gone, taking the summer and a 22-year-long portion of my life with her. I think she waved, but maybe not.
I don’t know what I expected. A balloon drop? A marching band? To breathlessly put the final touches on her outfit as we smiled at each other in the mirror? My husband and I just looked at each other and smiled.
It’s not that my daughter isn’t excited about being a senior or aware of its milestone meanings. She and her friends, a tight group since elementary school, have already made memory boxes and begun filming a senior-year documentary and planning their various celebrations — homecoming, birthday parties, proms and, of course, graduation — with no request for parental input.
I’ve been steeling myself to face an empty nest for months now, but in many ways she is already gone.
It’s been years since I’ve been involved in her first-day wardrobe choices, or pushed a cart through Office Depot, guided by a list provided by the school district. (So many Clorox wipes! So many boxes of Kleenex!) I barely remember the heated arguments over the necessity of a new backpack or having a phone, “like all the other kids.” My lunch-making skills are no longer requested; my fashion sense is dismissed. Neither my husband nor I was required to act as human alarm clocks, ticking down the minutes before “we really have to leave.”
On her last first day, we didn’t have to go anywhere. She drove herself.
I loathe the term ‘helicopter parent,’ writes columnist Mary McNamara. But amid a teen mental health crisis and other pressures, don’t blame us for being anxious.
I remain her emergency contact, of course, receiving, over the last few years, texted updates of a midmorning migraine, the just-noticed emergence of a wisdom tooth or a more existential crisis. But where once I was CEO and general manager, I am now more personal assistant/consultant emeritus.
It is still an exhausting job at times. After sending me a between-class text expressing deep despair (”This is the worst day EVER”), my daughter will go silent for hours while I imagine the worst, only to have her later explain that she got a B on a quiz or that there was an earthquake drill.
Still, it’s nice to be needed.
I know, I know — my child still needs me, and I have the laundry baskets and credit card receipts to prove it. And it is a relief to not to be a full and physical participant in the educational experience, finding and tying every shoe, helping choose every outfit, making every meal, overseeing an absurd amount of homework and scheduling my work life around afternoon teacher meetings, school plays and choral performances.
I certainly do not miss the nonstop chaos of trying to put children to sleep at night and rouse them in the morning, and I especially do not miss the dreaded brushing of the hair.
As the mother of two girls, I have spent countless, often very tense and tearful, school mornings dealing with hair. Washing it, styling it, brushing it. For years, the most valuable item in our entire house was the spray bottle of detangler. And there were many, many days when, as the magic hour of 8 a.m. neared, I truly believed that if I had to confront one more series of snarls, scrounge up one more hair elastic or hear one more complaint about me brushing too hard or “that doesn’t look right,” I would lose the trembling remnants of my mind.
Yet when my daughter recently asked me to give her a French braid, I once again cursed the stealth with which even the most frustrating parts of my life had been stolen. As I stood behind her and reached for the brush, I couldn’t remember the last time I done so. When did my youngest, my baby, take control of her own hair? I couldn’t tell you. As with so many inching, backtracking steps toward adulthood, I didn’t notice until long after it happened.
As an empty nest looms, I have vowed to savor even the most mundane moment of this final school year. But even that resolution is often outside my control.
On my daughter’s last first day of high school, I set aside time in the afternoon to discuss, and celebrate, the occasion. She, of course, responded to each of my eager questions with various derivations of “fine” and retreated to her room. Only long after I had returned to work did she present herself, energetically rattling off details, concerns, questions and plans while I tried to focus my now quite divided attention.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. My children have always chosen to share confidences the way my dogs get the zoomies: suddenly, frantically and usually when I am on deadline. Still, with the dreadful knowledge that all those ill-timed after-school bursts of “Mom, Mom, MOM” will be soon be replaced by silence, I am (note to my editor) trying to embrace even the most ill-timed interruptions.
Well, maybe not when they involve “come quick!” howls of terror over “a tarantula” that turns out to be a very small spider. Because, you know, there will be spiders at college and she’s going to have to cope.
After the pitiless grind of junior year, we are all determined to enjoy our family’s final days in high school. Yes, they will include the nightmare of college applications as well as the ongoing pressure of AP classes, basketball, community service and the inevitable welter of extracurriculars — as students are continually told, senior year should be fun, but they’re still building those all important “résumés.”
But these are the last of the last days in high school for us all, and while a daily balloon drop is not feasible — so messy, and bad for the environment — they are worth celebrating.
Even if only with a hot breakfast, a quick photo and a French braid.
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