Children Teaching Letting Go

In my imagination, I will die an old woman with beloved children and grandchildren gathered around me, and I will be ready. But right now, in this moment, I don't want to think about dying or the fact that I'll be a grandmother some time this glorious Montana summer.

Or maybe the baby will be born when the mountains are on fire and smoke bellows through our sleepy town. (We anticipate wildfires these days.) I want to keep my attention on anything other than the stunning realization that all three of our children are grown or close to it, and this is an era, for me, of letting go.

It started when our oldest child went to second grade. Before that I had home-schooled her, taught her how to tell the difference between a moth and a butterfly by looking at the fuzzy antennas the moth wore. I wrote somewhere in some journal about those days. I don't know where the journal is or as parents always say, where the time went.

I do know that when I look into the future now, I don't see our girl in her blue coat, zipped tight to her neck, looking a bit frightened and heading off to school and all the beginning and letting go that meant for me and for her.

Instead I see, or at best anticipate, a time when we will welcome new life, and see our children making choices without the need for approval or advice from parents, and in all this, there is a surrender that I must acknowledge.