Learning to Say Bye-Bye

It’s like I’ve grown Velcro on the palms of my hands. I just can’t let go of this little boy and all his little boyness. Today I tried to cull his wardrobe, pulling out the baby t-shirts and too-small socks and pants, the 2Ts that somehow get shoved to the bottom of the drawer, the pajama bottoms that would barely fit one of his stuffed animals, much less him. And virtually every time I put something in the “out” pile, I had a twinge of something like sadness, but I wasn’t sad. I was—am—happy, happy that I can be around now to see this child grow more and more each day, thankful that he is healthy and sound and solid and stable. I pass his preschool, where he is in his last year before he moves on to “the bighouse” as one mother calls kindergarten, and get the same twinge. It’s a feeling that makes me long for that stirring inside, that kicking, that life.

But it’s not baby fever. I see friends or acquaintances struggling with newborn babes, with toddlers, with hard-headed two- and three-year-olds who’ve sentenced their parents to death by dawdling. Even if the baby or child is absolutely scrumptious, I instantly recall that feeling of pushing a stroller to nowhere, as I eye their cute offspring while I remember my own. I fleetingly considered a second child, but creating a new life is not akin to deciding to get a dog. And for many reasons—not to mention that I’m nearly fresh out of eggs and we don’t feel like running to the store for more--this “older mom” has hung up her ovaries. So, I don’t want another baby. I just want this one back.

As each day passes, as my son reaches a new milestone—writing his name, getting himself dressed, cutting out perfect shapes with the sharp and once-forbidden scissors--I myself feel more independent, knowing that I can take more “me time” (what an obnoxious expression, though it serves its purpose for mothers) as well as time for our micro-family of three, from ramping up my freelance business to making something nice for dinner to finally dejunking the junk drawer. I should be satisfied that life is so good, and yet I feel like I’m losing something. I’m losing the chunky, fuzzy-headed baby who wanted to be held all the time, that baby with the starfish hands and the fat, pink feet I couldn’t stop squeezing. Instead, I have a thriving, rambunctious boy whose limbs are growing longer and stronger, whose feet keep needing new shoes with alarming frequency, who puts his hands on his hips as he stands in the kitchen and asks what’s for dinner, as if he’s just come home from working 9 to 5. He’s no baby anymore.

I realize this attempt to let go, to acknowledge his maturity, is just the beginning of saying goodbye, that it comes with the territory (and rightly so, or else we’d all be in therapy) and that it’s a natural life stage that probably began right around the time my period was late. My neighbor took her “baby”—her only child, like me—back to college after the Christmas break, this weekend, and openly admits to having a hard time letting go. Leaving my son alone with his nanny for the first time and hugging him goodbye on the first day of preschool was a tearjerker, so I guess I’m looking at a lifetime of knot-in-throat syndrome. Another woman I know is pregnant with number three—not as uncommon as you may think—and I wonder if she was motivated, in part, by wanting to prolong the starfish hands stage. Even the true “older mothers” among us—women with grown children who have children of their own—still think of their adult sons and daughters as theirs. “You’ll always be my baby,” they’re prone to saying.

I try to tell myself that I should take joy in this growing boy, and that each 3T undershirt simply gets replaced with a size 4-5, which in turn gets replaced by a 6X, and so it goes until we’ll be arguing over a pair of jeans in the mall. (Maybe I’m sad because the clothes are getting more expensive.) And the fact is that we have years to go before he comes to us and announces that he wants to go to college in South America, or that he’s getting an apartment with some friends, or that his wedding is going to be in California, because that’s where his fiancé is from, and by the way they are moving out there for good.

These little beings aren’t “ours” to keep forever, anymore than each of us is owned by our parents. Logically, of course, we all know this. But that doesn’t make cleaning out your kid’s sock drawer any easier. For now, we hold them close—even closer when they act as if they don’t need us (for that’s when they need us the most). And then, if all goes well in the years to come, one day we take a very deep breath, we steal another kiss on the top of the head that now towers over our own, and we let them go, as we should and as they should. Even though they’ll always be our babies.