Bringing Baby to the Airport: She’s Ready to Fly
Launching a child into adulthood is hard on the mama bird left behind
I’m driving my baby to the airport today so she can start a new life. My role is slipping from main character status to supporting cast member.
No, that’s not quite right. She isn’t a baby. She’s a twenty-something adult who has wrestled with some gators already in her short life and come out on top.
Also, I’m technically not driving. I’m in the passenger seat which is a good thing because writing this story on my mobile phone while driving would be a phenomenally bad idea. My spouse and fellow parent is behind the wheel.
We’ve been a team on this parenting journey for over two decades now. Whichever one of us is driving the other is alongside. When it comes to literal driving my spouse is more likely to be the driver. For metaphorical driving of the parenting mothership, I’m usually at the wheel.
The feminist in me laments falling into such traditionally gendered roles but it suits us. He loves to drive. I hate it. I’m a terrible backseat driver who can dish but not take it. Early on it was clear one of our careers was going to be in the backseat and mine was the logical choice. This put me in the driver’s seat for day-to-day parenting.
In our actual backseat at the moment is the baby, grown far beyond infant carriers and booster seats. She’s grumpy and half asleep at the moment, headphones on so she can listen to music which would cause her father to slowly go mad and drive us into oncoming traffic.
The headphones also prevent her from hearing my helpful driving suggestions offered up at regular intervals to my increasingly irritated spouse. Everyone has their coping mechanisms of choice for dealing with the friction of functioning as a family of stubborn individualists.
Her grumpiness has nothing to do with leaving home. She’s eager and ready. A great job and a new apartment await at the other end of her transatlantic flight. She’s grumpy because she stayed up all night playing D & D with college friends. A long day of travel stretches in front of her followed by days of unpacking, furnishing an apartment, and settling into a new life unbound by the restrictions of hovering parents or a paternalistic university.
In the front seat, we are grumpy because our baby is leaving. It is the way of things of course. You equip your child to succeed. You cheer with every triumph and cry with every setback. They start on wobbly legs, you blink, and suddenly they are running. Running away from you. Not to escape you but for the sheer joy of motion, power, and possibility in their young body.
It is right. It is good. It is painful.
At an age when other babies crawled, this baby liked to roll. She would spy a desired toy on the other side of the room and roll over and over until she reached her destination. Can’t spy the baby you set down a moment ago? Check beneath the sofa. She probably rolled under there to play with some intriguing dust bunnies.
She’s never been one to do things the way other people do. Who cares if all the other babies crawl? I’m going to get there my own way in my own time. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just …” comes out of my mouth much too often as she grows and gets swallowed back even more frequently than it is said.
No. No, it wouldn’t be easier. Not for my girl. Chances are it wouldn’t even be possible. This baby has got to roll her own way. Her method may not be a common one but it gets her where she wants to go.
Way to roll baby girl. I’m proud of you.
This leaving shouldn’t seem so major. She has been standing on her own and directing her own path since she left for college. There have been many airport drop-offs between freshman year and now, Thanksgivings, Christmases, and summer breaks. Each time she came home we do the awkward dance of fitting back temporarily into family life which has moved on and formed new patterns.
But this leave-taking is different. The next time she visits it will be as a career woman with a job and apartment of her own, paid out of her salary. How many vacation days do I have and how much of this precious resource do I wish to use seeing my parents, she will ask herself.
We’ve been through this shuffling of the dance card before. Her elder sister was the first to fully fly the nest and she did so with speed, determination, and finality. The joy of interacting with an adult child doing well and facing the world with youthful vigor and enthusiasm is a gift not given to all and I am fully appreciative of my blessings.
But in my quiet moments, I miss the gift of shared space and being and living in the same place even if only on the school breaks.
Covid gave us more time than any of us expected with our youngest two. Time for long walks watching the lambs and ducklings grow while we talked about life, relationships, goals, and values. While I hate the pandemic and the death and havoc strewn in its wake, I’m thankful for this gift of time.
My daughter returned for her final year of college in person. The campus under Covid was not the same.
“I miss the liminal spaces,” she said in a phone call lamenting the necessary changes, “those in-between times like chatting before class, lingering in the dining hall laughing with friends, all the unplanned interactions that pop up as you pass and connect with friends and strangers throughout the day.”
I mourn the lost liminal spaces of our new adult-to-adult relationship. There will be visits and even shared holidays in our future but likely never again will we live in a house together going about our daily lives focused on ourselves but passing in the halls, aware of the rhythms of our respective daily lives.
A professor spoke at the college orientation. “I was where you were last year,” she said to the assembled anxious parents. “I dropped my eldest off at college went in to work and sat at my desk crying. A colleague came by and said quietly, ‘Remember this is a good thing. How much more reason would you have to cry if they weren’t able to leave you?’”
Yes! it was true at college dropoff and it is even more true today as I say goodbye at the airport. My job performance as a mom thus far is far from perfect but it has brought us to this point. She is more than ready. Not because of my fine parenting and sometimes in spite of my many mistakes, but by her own strength and tenacity.
Fly baby girl. Roll whatever way you please to reach your goals. I’m not turning in my mom badge and resigning but I’m shifting responsibilities and fading back to watch you soar on your own strong wings.
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