We Release Our Children in Inches

For years, loving my children required knowing things.

Where are you going? Who will be there? What time will you be home? Did you eat? Is your homework done? Do you have everything you need?

I knew school schedules and shoe sizes, what time practice ended and which permission slip needed to be returned by Friday. I knew when someone was unusually quiet in the car and when a story about the school day seemed to be missing a chapter. I knew which questions might get an answer and which ones were better saved for later.

Motherhood required an extraordinary amount of attention to the details of someone else's life.

Then, slowly, there were things I didn't know. Not because anything was wrong. Their lives were becoming theirs.

I've been thinking about when that happened, and I can't find the moment. There are milestones, of course. The ones we photograph and remember. First days of school. Driver's licenses. Graduations. Moving out. They give us something tangible to point to and say, Look how much has changed.

But I don't think that's really how it happens.

We release our children in inches.

It begins so early that we barely recognize it as release. Someone else holds the baby and walks into another room. A classroom door closes behind them. They spend the night somewhere else. Eventually, they stay home without us, and then they leave home without us. One day they drive away and we aren't sitting in the passenger seat.

Each time, the distance changes a little.

For a long time, I was still the person who knew almost everything. I knew where they were and when they would be back. I knew the names that appeared most often in their stories. I knew when something was bothering them, sometimes before they had words for it themselves.

Then they began having experiences I wasn't there to witness. There were conversations I didn't hear and decisions I learned about after they had already been made. Entire ordinary days passed without me knowing much about them at all.

And yet, sometimes I still know things.

We were out to dinner recently, and Foster was looking at the menu. After a minute, he looked over at me and asked, “What do you think?”

I knew exactly what he meant.

“The Summer Seasonal Pasta?”

He looked at me completely freaked out. That was exactly what he had been planning to order.

“How did you know that?”

“I tuned in,” I told him.

Which was true.

We both knew what had just happened. He hadn't asked me which entrée he should choose. He hadn't pointed to anything on the menu. Somehow I knew what he was asking, and then I knew what he was thinking about ordering.

It was funny, and very us. But I've thought about that little exchange since.

There are so many details of Foster's life I no longer know, as there should be. The same is true with both of my children. I don't know every conversation they have or every decision they're considering. I don't know everything that happens during the ordinary hours of their days unless they choose to tell me.

But I know them.

Maybe those are different kinds of knowing.

For years, motherhood required information because I was responsible for so much of their lives. I needed to know where they were, what they needed, what was happening at school, when the appointment was, whether there was enough money in the lunch account, and approximately how many hours of sleep everyone had gotten.

Now the responsibility is different.

The attunement remains.

I still notice. I still have questions. I can hear about something happening in one of their lives and immediately begin assembling possibilities in my mind. I can see the decision I might make. I know things now that I didn't know when I was their age, and there are lessons I would happily spare them from learning the way I had to learn them myself.

Sometimes I want to reach across the distance between experience and youth and hand them everything I know.

Of course, wisdom doesn't transfer that neatly. And knowing someone for their entire life doesn't mean knowing the life they should live.

There was a time when helping my children find their way was part of my responsibility. I chose schools and made appointments. I created boundaries and made decisions. I exposed them to possibilities and tried to help them recognize what was already inside them.

Now I can still see possibilities for them because I know them and love them and have been paying attention for their entire lives.

But seeing a possibility isn't the same as knowing the way.

Their lives will include directions I couldn't have predicted, people I haven't met, decisions I wouldn't make, and versions of themselves none of us have encountered yet. There may be things I see in them that become central to who they are and things I am completely wrong about.

My place in their lives is changing too. I'm learning that I can listen without immediately solving. I can ask questions without needing to know the answer. I can offer what I've learned when it is wanted and trust that what I've already given doesn't disappear simply because I'm no longer directing what happens next.

Maybe this stage of motherhood asks for a different kind of attention. The kind that notices without always intervening. The kind that remains available without needing access to everything. The kind that trusts that connection doesn't require constant information.

I don't think we ever finish releasing our children. There will probably always be another inch, another moment when love asks us to loosen our grip on something we once held closely.

And perhaps one of the later inches is releasing the future we can imagine for them.

That one feels especially tender to me.

When you have watched someone grow from the very beginning, it is almost impossible not to imagine where their gifts might lead. But my children are still becoming. There are lives ahead of them that none of us can see from here.

I don't need to know who they are going to become.

Maybe knowing them now is enough.

And every once in a while, one of them can look across a restaurant table, barely ask me a question, and discover that somehow, after all these years and all these inches, I'm still tuned in.

A Gentle Invitation

As you move through the week ahead, I wonder...

Where might love be asking you to know a little less and trust the connection a little more?